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All Theses and Dissertations
2004-07-01
Blank Pages of the Holocaust: Gypsies in
Yugoslavia During World War II
Elizabeta Jevtic
Brigham Young University - Provo
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BLANK PAGES OF THE HOLOCAUST: GYPSIES IN YUGOSLAVIA
DURING WORLD WAR II
by
Elizabeta Jevtic
A thesis submitted to the faculty of
Brigham Young University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master’s of Arts
Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages
Brigham Young University
August 2004
Copyright©2004 Elizabeta Jevtic
All Rights Reserved
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE COMMITTEE APROVAL
of a thesis submitted by
Elizabeta Jevtic
This thesis has been read by each member of the following graduate
committee and by majority vote has been found to be satisfactory.
_______________________
Date
_________________________________
James K. Lyon, Chair
_______________________
Date
_________________________________
Hans-Wilhelm Kelling
_______________________
Date
_________________________________
Grant Lundberg
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERISTY
As chair of the candidate’s graduate committee, I have read the thesis of Elizabeta
Jevtic in its final form and have found that (1) its format, citations, and bibliographic
styles are consistent and acceptable and fulfill university and department style
requirements; (2) its illustrative materials including figures, tables, and charts are in
place; and (3) the final manuscript is satisfactory to the graduate committee and is
ready for submission to the university library.
_______________________
Date
_________________________________
James K. Lyon
Chair, Graduate Committee
Accepted for the Department
_________________________________
Alan F. Keele
Graduate Coordinator
Accepted for the College
_________________________________
Van Gessel
Dean, College of Humanities
ABSTRACT
BLANK PAGES OF THE HOLOCAUST: GYPSIES IN YUGOSLAVIA DURING
WORLD WAR II
Elizabeta Jevtic
Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages
Master’s of Arts
After a general overview of the persecution of Gypsies (Roma) during World
War II, this thesis focuses on the situation of Gypsies on the territory of Serbia and
Croatia.
The two republics are chosen because of their unique structures during the
years 1941 to 1945. Both republics had puppet regimes set up by Germany; however,
Croatia was an ally to Germany and strove to mirror the Third Reich in all its
policies. The regime’s head, Ante Pavelic, was known as one of the most brutal and
merciless men on the territory of Yugoslavia, and with him Croatian paramilitary
forces committed great atrocities in concentration camps established in Croatia.
Serbia was divided up among Germany and its allies, and its racial policies varied
depending on the occupying forces. In Croatia, all Gypsies were annihilated, but in
Serbia many survived because of the protection provided by local peasantry and
occupying forces from Hungary, Bulgaria or Italy.
The thesis points at four main findings: (1) the negligence toward the Gypsies’
plight and persecution; (2) the fact that, according to Nazi definitions, the persecution
of Gypsies was based on their race rather than their style of living; (3) the fact that
there were multiple concentration camps throughout the territory of Yugoslavia, with
the most brutal camp at Jasenovac in Croatia; and (4) the fact that the Holocaust was
far more than a Jewish phenomenon.
Examining the two regions and highlighting them, the thesis proves that the
fate of Gypsies in German-occupied territories of Yugoslavia was the same as the fate
of Jews, that they were persecuted under superficial excuses, but with racial
sentiments as the primary motivation. This new material, along with little known
facts, documents, and stories show how marginalized Gypsies have been since the
end of the war, and how little scholarly attention has been paid to their suffering.
These new and some unpublished materials also help depict the brutality of
Jasenovac, the Auschwitz of Balkans, and prove that the atrocities during World War
II were not committed only by German soldiers, but that they reached their peak
among people of other nationalities as well.
Finally, the thesis claims that Gypsies deserve to be placed in the study of the
Holocaust along side of Jews, and to receive the rights and remembrance that Jews
have been afforded.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to express appreciation to the Germanic and Slavic Department for
allowing me to step out of the ordinary and do research of this kind, and especially
for the members of the Committee, Professor Lyon, Professor Kelling and Professor
Lundberg, who read and evaluated my work, giving me constructive criticism and
feedback.
I also want to thank Spencer Green for taking time to read and edit this work,
as well as my friends in Serbia who helped me and supported me through the
research.
I am especially grateful to my father, Milorad Jevtic, for spending countless
hours collecting information, stories, maps, and encouraging me to finish this work.
Finally, I want to thank my ancestors for their sacrifices, which enabled me to be here
today.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
A very personal foreword………………………………………………………... 1
Introduction……………………………………………………………………….. 2
Chapter 1: Myths and truths about the persecution of the damned………….. 13
Final Solution and the Question of Gypsies……………………………. 25
Chapter 2: Yugoslavia: the case of Croatia and Serbia….……………………. 48
Life and death in Serbia…………………………………………………. 59
Life and death in Croatia………………………………………………… 75
Chapter 3: Jasenovac: the end station………………………………………….. 86
The beginnings of death at Jasenovac…………………………………... 86
The methods and tools of death at Jasenovac………………………….. 98
The ends of death at Jasenovac…………………………………………. 129
Epilogue to the deaths at Jasenovac……………………………………. 133
Chapter 4: Porrajmos, the Great Devouring………………………………….. 135
Ignorance about the Gypsies’ Holocaust………………………………. 137
The numbers game in Yugoslavia……………………………………… 143
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….. 154
Works Cited………………………………………………………………………158
vii
A very personal foreword
It is a beautiful snowy morning. My school just celebrated the Christmas season,
and I, as a director of the school's play, feel great and important. As I walk home from
school with my friends, the snow shines on the heavy pine branches. My dark, black hair
stands out as a contrast against the white ambience. The apartment building is in sight.
My little group stops. We exchange a few funny, happy words when another group of
schoolmates passes us. Suddenly one of the girls from that group shouts out in a
provoking conduct: "Hey, you’re wearing Santa's red coat. But, it looks like you stole it
from the poor Santa, since its sleeves seem to be too short for you." The group laughs. I
smile, thinking it is all meant as a joke. But she continues: "Isn't that the only thing
Gypsies are capable of, stealing? Aren’t you one too?" Confused and irritated, I glance at
her, turn around and head to home, mumbling goodbyes to my little group.
As I open the door to the apartment, the smell of my mother's baking hits my
nose. The warmth snuggles me in, and I feel a bit better. I enter the kitchen, still in my
coat, backpack on my shoulders, cheeks and nose red from the cold of the winter day. I
energetically seek my mother's attention. She is washing the dishes, gazing at them as if
they are a piece of some precious memory stored in her mind. She turns to meet my look
and tells me to take off my coat and get something to eat.
"Mom," I begin slowly "what does it mean that we are Gypsies?"
Wisdom personified in the physical body of a big, cheerful woman stops doing the
dishes, wipes her hands in a towel and helps me take off my bag and unbutton my coat.
She still has that gaze, as if some precious memory is being recalled in her mind, that
only she can see and feel.
"My coat sleeves are short. Girls were making fun of me, saying I stole it. But, I
didn't steal it mom. They know I didn't." I think there is a tear in my eye, caused by the
false accusations. There are in fact many tears, piled on the bottom of my eyelids, but I
am trying hard not to show my hurt. She just smiles and looks at me.
"You know you didn't steal it and that is all that matters. I know you didn't steal it.
That matters. You have Gypsy blood. Just as your brother and I have Gypsy blood. That
means that we carry in us honor, heritage and the energy of thousands that have gone
before us. That means that we laugh at the tides of time, standing anchored in a haven of
diversity. It means that we are different and people fear us, because we dare to be
different and cherish life. It means that we are an additional piece in God's marvelous
mosaic and that we are here to stay."
Introduction
I have Gypsy blood. Why not? I carry the voices and heritage of thousands within
me that shout louder every day, whispering into my ears to tell their story. I have always
known who I am, but only recently have I begun discovering who they were, those voices
that beg for me to commemorate them.
World War II and the phenomena called Shoah, Porrajmos or the Holocaust have
always fascinated me. I grew up listening to stories about my father's mother and her
survival through the war years as a young teenager. The word freedom gained new
meaning and depth for me each time my father told another story. Then I became a
teenager myself. The turmoil and hatred escalated in my country, and suddenly my
grandmother's stories became a reflection of my reality…Except that one half of that
2
reflection was missing. I was a Yugoslavian, with a Serbian father and a Hungarian
mother. I knew much of the struggles my Serbian ancestors endured during World War II
and the persecution of Slavs by Nazis. But I was not persecuted because I was a Serb; I
was persecuted because I was not pure, because I had Gypsy blood. I spent my childhood
with my mother's extended family. The little deals, smuggling, and love for adventure
were part of the mess, and I laughed at how delightful and different my relatives were,
but my mother always kept us at a safe distance from those deals. My brother and I were
two white pearls among the beige pearl variety. We were in both worlds, yet belonged to
none. And when the time of conflict came, the past persecution of Gypsies repeated itself.
What was that past in the case of my Gypsy family and friends? How did my mother's
side survive the Holocaust? What happened on the territory of Serbia and Croatia in the
years between 1941 and 1945? Why are Gypsies able to laugh, love adventure, and act as
if there never was a Porrajmos?
Very little is available on the topic of Gypsies during the Holocaust. There are
three main obstacles, which make it difficult to access more detailed information.
First, many documents that existed in Yugoslavia have been destroyed by German
troops or the puppet regimes which existed in both Serbia and Croatia. This was done
mainly to hide the evidence of brutality and to hide the actual numbers of people who
died in Yugoslavia during those four years. The immediate postwar destruction of any
evidentiary materials, the passage of time, and the recent conflicts in the Balkans make it
difficult for a researcher to find out what exactly happened in war torn Yugoslavia in
World War II. Some documents and stories about NDH (in English translation the
Independent State of Croatia), Partisans, and the Jewish plight exist, however, it remains
3
a little known fact that on the territory of Serbia and Croatia only fortunate Gypsies
survived by hiding in the woods, or in the mountains. Some, less lucky, were deported to
Auschwitz and other camps in Poland, Austria and Germany. Those least lucky were sent
to Jasenovac.
The second obstacle, and a well known fact, is that Gypsies are not people of
letters, but rather story tellers. Jews, known as the people of word, literate and highly
capable of expressing their plight, have done a great deal to open the eyes of the world to
their suffering in the ghettos, work and death camps. The voices of the Gypsies, however,
have mostly been silent. The Jewish community has preserved much of its history by
writing it down, publishing it and making sure the world hears and remembers the
Holocaust. Gypsies who can write have chosen to assimilate into the regular population
and forget their roots. Those that cannot write, share their stories only on rare occasions,
because they are humiliated by the events, and the impact that they have had on the future
of the Gypsies. For many Gypsy men and women, it is a taboo to speak about the event,
which occurred.
The third obstacle is a lack of interest on the part of history and historians.
Volumes of books and articles have been published on Jewish suffering, because there
are enough people who care to see these books published. Roma and Sinti have not found
many who will speak for them, and of those who do, most have a very limited echo. In
his recent publications, Dragoljub Ackovic, a Roma (one of the Gypsy tribes) writer and
author of books on the topic of Roma, and an editor of a Roma program in Belgrade,
claims that:
4
The biggest "killing of the truth" about the Roma occurred during the genocide in
World War II. Thousands of books, hundreds of thousand of texts, and millions of
articles have been written on this last great world crisis and about the destruction
of various nations during it [...] It is good that this has been done, because the
truth, no matter how bitter, needs to be remembered. However, the truth about the
destruction of the Roma population [...] has been deemed unimportant, has been
forgotten and pushed away. In other words, it has been removed from the eyes
and the ears of the public. Why? Because the action of hiding the truth fits the
needs of those who have caused that destruction. The question whether the Roma
themselves have a concern with that is not being posed. And how can it be posed
when the great number of those who knew the truth are not alive anymore?
Writings about who killed the Roma, when, how and why do not exist. Or so the
"truth killers" would like us to believe (Ackovic 6, my translation).
Echoing Ackovic’s words, the complete truth remains hidden, and many myths and
legends still envelope areas of the Holocaust that only few consider to research. This
seems to be especially the case with the events involving the Gypsies in the Balkan
territory during World War II.
In addition to these difficulties I, as a researcher, have limitations in finding
material and collecting documentation from original sources in Serbia and Croatia. This
inability to conduct a detailed research of primary and original documentation adds a
frustration in the findings. I am aware that if I had a chance of searching through the
materials and archives in Serbia and Croatia, I could attempt to answer more questions,
which will now remain only estimates. The passage of time further hinders the research,
5
since I am running against the time and only a few of the survivors of the Holocaust are
still alive and willing to share their stories with me. I have tried to compensate for that by
listening to stories told second-hand, by the next generation; however, these stories are
often inadequate replicas.
Nevertheless, with all these limitations and frustrations, I was able to research the
past of the Gypsies in Europe and in Serbia and Croatia. Many helpful hands and minds
supported my investigation by searching and gathering information and data for me in
Serbia, and I must acknowledge, without them, this would have been almost an
impossible task. With that great help I am able to present the following chapters, which
are by no means exhaustive, and which I hope spark further interest, investigation and
data collection.
I realize that many might not even be aware of the situation of the Gypsies prior
to the world wars, and use my first Chapter as a general overview of who Gypsies are,
where they came from, and what they faced on the European soil before the National
Socialists and before the Holocaust. In that chapter, I introduce some of the many laws
which were in effect against Gypsies, showing how they were persecuted under “racial”
prerogatives. I also explain the years of persecution, deportation to camps, and death
these wanderers faced in the countries under Hitler’s fist. Only a few statistics are
presented in this chapter to show how many Gypsies were thought to have lived in
Europe in 1939, and to better show the percentages of death during the war years. At the
end of the chapter I also show the statistics of how many Gypsies had been deported to
Auschwitz, and what number and percentage of these came from the territory of
Yugoslavia.
6
Chapter 2 is an exclusive account of Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1945. I give an
overview of how Yugoslavia became involved in the war and what happened in the
various regions. This is important to finding out how life was for the Gypsies, because
whether they lived or died depended what region they lived in, or where they were at the
time of the war. To better present this difference, I devote most of the chapter on Serbia
and on the persecution of Gypsies (or the lack thereof), showing that Serbia implemented
racial laws to various degrees, due to the fact that it was fractioned among Hungary,
Germany and Bulgaria, and each of these regimes implemented the laws differently.
Thus, Gypsies who were found in Vojvodina, under Hungarian occupation were barely
persecuted, even protected somewhat and taken into registry as Hungarians rather than as
Gypsies. This was not the case for those in lower Serbia under German rule. I also
describe the puppet state of Croatia in a small section of the chapter, mainly to establish
the difference between Croatia and Serbia. Both states were puppet regimes, however,
Croatia was an ally, with greater support in the regime, while Serbian population showed
greater resistance toward the puppet regime set up by Nazi Germany. As I researched the
case of Yugoslavia I realized that there is much to be said about Slovenia, Macedonia and
Montenegro. I acknowledge that I have not in detail examined all the regions in
Yugoslavia, but used Croatia and Serbia as general models.
Most atrocities in Croatia are described in Chapter 3, which tells the story of the
concentration camps at Jasenovac, according to some scholars possibly one of the most
notorious camps of the Holocaust. Supported by witness accounts and multiple pictures
from various sources, this chapter presents the brutal truth of Jasenovac and the Ustasha
emotional involvement in the Holocaust. I recognize this chapter could have taken up all
7
the pages of my entire paper. My intent, however, is not to give a detailed picture and
description of the things which occurred on a daily basis; rather, I want to draw attention
to the immense and unnecessary pain, suffering, and torture which took place by sharing
some of the stories and statistics. This camp was one in which even German officers and
SS men lost their cool when they saw the ways and methods of treating prisoners! My
task is to show why without sharing each and every grotesque detail.
In the final chapter, I take time to compare some statistics and discuss the
question of the Gypsy Holocaust, and present ignorance of it. This chapter deals with two
current issues that Gypsies have fought for since the end of the war. The first issue is the
account of how many died, where they died, and who they were. I show the difficulty in
assessing the numbers, due to lack of Gypsy registry in Yugoslavia, and also to the
numbers game the two republics Serbia and Croatia have played for decades, in order to
hide, exaggerate, or downplay the involvement and the number of deaths that took place
in their countries, not considering that in this game, Gypsies are the ones who lost the
most, not Serbs or Croats. The other issue is the ignorance toward Porrajmos, or the
Holocaust of the Gypsies. Many scholars debate the question whether Gypsies were
persecuted and annihilated due to their social standing or due to their race, as was the
case with the Jews. To claim that it was not case of racial hatred would mean to privilege
Jewish suffering, and to allow Gypsies to join the bandwagon of racial persecution would
mean that Jews would have to surrender their claims to a unique plight and grant Gypsies
allotment of reparation costs and victim rights.
In conclusion I summarize my findings of these chapters and offer my personal
opinion, hopefully adding a voice for Gypsies’ cause.
8
Projected results of the research
As I began the research, I have been able to see some success in compiling
information about the concentration camps in Yugoslavia of which little is known. These
camps are mentioned by name only, and just one of them has been referred to, but only in
reference to the Serbian population, not the Gypsies. One might think that no Gypsy ever
died in the Jasenovac camp! But, even though the debate is still on, most historians agree
that approximately 40,000 Gypsies died in this camp. In my research I have been able to
find eyewitness accounts, which confirm that families and tribes of Gypsies died in the
concentration camp Jasenovac. To me this is a great success, which accounts for 40,000
people we cannot find any records of anywhere.
Parallel to this is the heated debate about whether Gypsies were, like the Jews,
systematically persecuted and annihilated due to their race. Many scholars of Jewish
heritage, like Guenther Lewy, claim that the Holocaust is a unique racial persecution of
Jews alone. In my research, however, I have found testimonies of officers, government
officials, and even some religious heads, which testified of specific commands to destroy
all Jews and Gypsies alike. I will show that documents proclaimed ethnic purity and
condemned Gypsies as racially impure. The case of Yugoslavia can show that the
Holocaust was a monstrous deed, and that the Jewish plight was not unique.
Another result I am slowly beginning to notice is bringing to light the differences
in the fates of Gypsies in the territory of Croatia versus Serbia. I hope to answer the
question of why Gypsies populated Serbia after World War II, while none were found in
Croatia, and what the different historical backgrounds were that led to this phenomenon.
These clarifications will help acknowledge the past as it was and help the victims and the
9
survivors who have been fighting to be acknowledged as such. The acknowledgment of
Yugoslavian guilt and of Gypsies’ sacrifices might be the tool to heal, and move on and
leaving the past and racial prejudices behind.
Further, I am using texts in Serbo-Croatian, which I am slowly translating in the
hope of helping some of the work of Yugoslavian Gypsy scholars find a stronger echo in
their struggle to gain respect in the field of Holocaust writing and research. This can only
happen if their works are published, mentioned, or pointed to more widely and in
additional languages.
Finally, a personal result is that I will find what happened to my own family in the
years of World War II and quell the inner-turmoil that has been with me since I began my
research.
The potential impact, value, and importance of the project
As I have shared my personal story in the foreword, I have slightly touched on the
impact, value, and importance of this research. First of all, the academic value of the
work is enormous. This will be the first research of its kind, since no book or essay has
ever been written about the Gypsies’ of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia! Nobody has taken
the opportunity or the time to find the answers to the past, which seem to still hold both
the Croatian and Serbian people in bonds of brotherly hatred. If I can show the truths and
the myths about Gypsies, I will achieve two things. First, the stereotypes and prejudices
about this race will be broken down and they will gain the respect they deserve. Second,
the research will be a building block toward recognition and contribute to the debate of
the racial persecution of Gypsies. Present recognition of the past will help alleviate the
10
suffering and humiliation many Gypsies endure today in Yugoslavia and in the rest of
Europe.
The recognition of Gypsies and other victims as equals to the Jews might have a
great political and social impact in the field of human rights, and also might be a spring
board for future research and further contribution of scholars in unraveling the mystery
that surrounds the history of the Gypsies in World War II and seems to continue in
classifying them as second-class citizens. The paper can become a springboard for
research about the present of minorities in Europe and their human rights (or the lack
thereof). If the example of the Gypsies in past and present Croatia and Serbia can be
investigated, then answers to some of the social, economic and political problems among
various ethnic groups will be found, and future conflicts avoided or prevented.
Also, we owe this research to people who died without being mentioned in any book of
the Holocaust remembrance. Their existence became a line or two in the books of
remembrance that the Jewish written tradition wrote for its victims. They too, though
Gypsies had names, feelings, emotions, thoughts and dreams worth commemorating.
Finally, this research is partly a personal quest to find out a part of my own history. As I
explored and researched the general history of Europe, Yugoslavia and Gypsies, and as I
listened to individual stories, I have gained a greater love for the people who were always
looked down upon, and I wanted to convey that love. I have learned for myself what it
means to be a Gypsy, and what my duty and responsibilities are as a Gypsy. Because of
the love and appreciation I have gained for the Gypsy victims, I also want to add a word
of caution. This research is full of tears, pain, and the inability to convey the plight and
misery of human beings who were worth nothing to anyone in Europe, and who still fight
11
to be recognized as victims of the Nazi regime. If you, the reader, are willing to take this
adventure with me, I warn you of the emotional roller coaster you will experience reading
these pages and beg you to share your tears and pain with the voices of those who will
speak to you. Maybe in a small way, you feel you have learned about the value of each
soul and thereby helped change future for better.
12
Chapter 1:
Myths and truths about the persecution of the damned
Opre Roma
Roma arise
Gelem, gelem, lungone dromensa
I’ve traveled, traveled long
roads
Meeting with happy Roma
Roma from where have you
come
With tents set on fortune’s
road
Roma, o fellow Roma
Maladilem baktale Romensa
A Romale katar tumen aven
E tsarensa baktale dromensa
A Romale, a chavale
Vi man sas bari familija
Mudardas la e kalo legija
Once I had a great family
The Black Legion murdered
them
Come with me, all the
world’s Roma
For the Roma roads have
opened
Now is the time, rise up
Roma,
We shall now rise high
Roma, o fellow Roma
Aven mansa sa lumniake Roma
Kai putaile e Roma droma
Ake viama, ushti Rom akana
Amen hutasa mishto kai akana
A Romale, a chavale
The anthem of the World Roma Congress, composed by Jarko Jovanovic to a
traditional melody, speaks of the sad fate that has befallen Gypsies ever since they began
wandering the world (Puxon 16). Their exact origin has never been fully revealed.
However, most historians agree that Gypsies came from India, in an attempt to flee an
enemy:
Die genaue Herkunft der einzelnen Sinti und Roma Gruppen kann von der
Wissenschaft nicht eindeutig bestimmt werden. Einigkeit besteht lediglich darin,
den Nordwesten Indiens als gemeinsame geographische Wurzel der Sinti und
Roma zu betrachten. Genaue Daten zur Auswanderung und zu den
13
eingeschlagenen Wanderwegen gibt es nicht. Die Wissenschaftler sind hier auf
Rückschlüsse und Hypothesen angewiesen, die umstritten sind (Landeszentrale
für Politische Bildung 8).
Some historians claimed Gypsies were of Mongolian origin, while others debated
possible kinship with Egyptians, but research on the Roma language “proved that the
Roma tribe came from India, actually from northwestern Pakistan Punjab area. It is
assumed that their name, Roma, which means people, a nation, stems from the older
Loma or Doma, the names used in Persia and Armenia to characterize Roma tribes”
(Ackovic 27, my translation).
According to a legend told around fire, Gypsies were a tribe who lived next to an
Indian maharaja in peace and mutual understanding. As years passed by, a wise man
spoke to the maharaja and prophesied of his family’s total destruction but added that the
Roma tribe would survive. Hoping to rescue his daughter, the maharaja begged the Roma
tribe’s chief to take her and take care of her as if she were his own, which he did.
However, when the chief died, it was his son’s turn to marry and take his father’s place.
But, the only woman that pleased the young man was the maharaja’s daughter who he
held as his sister. When he found out who she was, he was cautioned to keep her identity
secret, in order to protect her from the enemy. The legend goes on to describe the fights
and divisions which occurred among the tribe because the young man married the
beautiful Indian daughter, and how he and his followers left their home and were forced
to wander forever (Federal Ministry of ethnic and minority Committees 2001, my
translation).
14
How much of this legend is close to the truth can only be speculated. The legend
could serve as an explanation of the wanderings of various tribes and their differences in
name, culture, and approximation of when they arrived on the European continent and
where they came from. Even though the name Gypsy has been used collectively to name
all these various groups, the tribes distinguish themselves by using the names of two of
their tribes, Sinti and Roma:
Sinti and Roma is the ethnic group’s own preferred nomenclature, although there
are other smaller groups of Roma living in Germany belonging to other tribes
such as the Kalderash or Lalleri. The term ‘Rom’ (plural Roma) is taken from
Romani language (which evolved from early modern Indo-Aryan) and means
‘person’ (Tebutt xiii).
The ‘Rom’ has been widely adopted to mean a Gypsy; however, there are differences
between Sinti and Roma:
Heute leben etwa acht Millionen Roma in Europa, die meisten in Südost,
Osteuropa und Spanien. Roma leben aber auch in allen amerikanischen und
weiteren außereuropäischen Ländern. Die Sinti sind eine der zahlreichen Gruppen
dieses indischstämmigen Volkes; nämlich diejenige, die seit Jahrhunderten im
deutschen Sprachgebiet lebt und mit deutscher Kultur, Sprache und Geschichte
eng verbunden ist…Die Roma weisen erhebliche kulturelle, soziale, sprachliche,
historische und regionale Binnendifferenzierungen auf; die zahlreiche Gruppen
grenzen sich mit unterschiedlicher Intensität gegeneinander ab. Gleichwohl
können auch Gemeinsamkeiten benannt werden: eine dieser Gemeinsamkeiten ist
die Existenz indischer- und anderer- Elemente in Kultur und Sprache, die seit
15
nunmehr 600 Jahren in Auseinandersetzung mit den regionalen oder nationalen
Kulturen Europas immer wieder neu verarbeitet und zur eigenständigen Kultur
umgeformt werden. Die Roma sind deshalb nicht bloß soziale Randgruppe,
sondern zugleich integraler Bestandteil der europäischen Kulturen (Reemtsma
8,9).
There still exists confusion in written works over the term that should be used.
The collective term, Gypsies, will prevail in this paper, because it is the most common,
most collective, one that needs positive attachment, and so that ‘Gypsies’ will be
connected with the words plight, sacrifice, family, love, and people.
Gypsies, since they left their home in India, have been wandering, living a nomad
life style, seeking for centuries to stay close to nature, and their customs, and beliefs, and
to share of their love for family, and the earth. They have always been even less popular
than Jews due to their reputation as poor, “illiterate beggars and petty thieves” and they
were “unwelcome everywhere” (Niewyk 2). Dragoljub Ackovic, a writer and president of
the Roma Organization in Yugoslavia, offers a possible cause for their continual
movement:
They were always “guests from nowhere,” accidental passers-by, travelers with a
purpose. It is said that they were a minority in India as well, and that as such they
were not highly regarded. Maybe this is due to the caste system, though we can’t
tell if they belonged to the lowest caste system. When the great conquerors
invaded their lands the Roma tribe “unglued” their possessions and tents from the
land in which they never took roots in the first place and began their travels like
leaves carried by the wind (Ackovic 4, my translation).
16
Gypsies themselves would not have considered a life of continual wandering a
feature characteristic of their race, but rather were forced to adopt the nomadic style and
abandon every place they approached and attempted to recognize as their new home:
Contrary to the popular gadjo (non-Roma) conception, a Roma is not essentially a
nomad. Most certainly they do not think of themselves as ‘wandering Gypsies,’ an
invention of romanticism. On the other hand they are historically linked with
frequent migrations over great distances…Many Roma, if they were not forced
would make only a few moves a year. Change of location is mainly motivated by
economic considerations, but an appreciable amount results from being moved on
by officials (Puxon 6).
In their continual wandering, Gypsies moved further away from India, and by the 1200s
they began to spread through out the European continent. They brought rich traditions of
woodwork, music, and story telling, three features which greatly helped them survive in
their new surroundings and communities:
In drei Bereichen der menschlichen Kultur berufen sich die Sinti und Roma auf
eine eigene Tradition, die weiterzupflegen ihr Anliegen ist: Im Handwerk, in der
Musik und in der Erzählkunst... Ihre künstlerischen und handwerklichen Berufe
reichen auf eine Jahrhunderte alte Tradition zurück, die es nicht nur zu erhalten
und zu pflegen galt, sondern die auch bereichert und weiterentwickelt werden
sollte. Diese Tradition wurde in der Regel in den Familien weitergegeben, ergänzt
durch eine allgemeine Fortbildung und Weiterentwicklung…Die Musik der Sinti
und Roma - das ist vor allem die Musik der ungarischen Sinti und Roma…Nicht
an Schulen oder Universitäten erlernten die Sinti und Roma ihre musikalischen
17
Fähigkeiten, sondern sie entwickelten sie aus der Tradition ihrer Familien. Ihre
Musik entstand aus der Kunst des Hinhörens und der augenblicklichen
Improvisation. Kaum einer der großen Sinti und Roma Musiker konnte Noten
lesen und schreiben…Die Erzählkultur der Sinti und Roma verdient besondere
Aufmerksamkeit, da sie einen Einblick in das geistige und soziale Leben der Sinti
und Roma erlaubt; sie gibt Aufschluss darüber, wie sich Sinti und Roma selbst
und die Mehrheitsbevölkerung sehen und erleben. Das Erzählen hat eine lange
Tradition und gehört zu den Identitätsbildenden [sic] Faktoren der Sinti und
Roma. Denn als eine im Wesentlichen schriftlose Kultur dient ihr die mündliche
Überlieferung als einzige Möglichkeit, Tradition und Erfahrung zu bilden und
weitergeben…In [d]eren Augen ist eine Familie gesegnet, wenn sie ihre Alten
lange bei sich haben kann. [Die] Familien sind stolz auf ihre Alten. Denn Träger
der Überlieferung in der Lebenswelt der Familien sind die alten Menschen. Und
wenn alte Menschen erzählen, dann ist ihr Erzählen durchdrungen von eigener
Lebenserfahrung und gereifter Lebensanschauung (Landeszentrale für Politische
Bildung 8,9,11).
Because they never owned land or had their own military or government, Gypsies
were independent, and as such came into communities willing to share their knowledge,
craftsmanship, and music without any economic or political prerogative in mind. But,
after some time, the dark skinned people, who always lingered around in the fields stood
out, could not integrate with the common crowd, and awoke suspicion. Stories began to
circulate all over Europe, suspicion grew into fear and fear into prejudice, and the result
was “die rund 600jährige Geschichte der Sinti und Roma in Mitteleuropa, die von
18
Anbeginn an eine Geschichte der Verfolgung, der Diskriminierung und Entrechtung, des
versteckten und offenen Rassismus und der Kriminalisierung war“ (Landeszentrale für
Politische Bildung 18, italics added). Many intellectual heads of Europe did not hesitate
“to claim that in the veins of Gypsies boiled vampire’s blood, as well as of Neanderthals”
(Ackovic 51, my translation). Ian Hancock, a professor of English and Linguistics at the
University of Texas and the U.S. representative of the International Roma Union to the
United Nations, explains the multiple reasons for the centuries-long prejudice,
discrimination, and persecution of Gypsies on the European soil:
The reasons for anti-Gypsyism are complex, and are the result of several different
factors coming together over time…Briefly these are (a) that because the first
Roma to arrive in Europe did so at the same time as, and because of, the Ottoman
Turkish takeover of the Christian Byzantine Empire they were therefore perceived
to be equally a threat; (b) the fact that Roma were a non-white, non-Christian,
alien population (c) the fact that Roma have never had claim to a geographical
territory or have had an economy, militia or government, and (d) the fact that
culture itself maintains a strict social boundary between Roma and the non-Roma
world (2003:3).
In other words, because they did not have military power to back them up, nor any form
of government to be recognized as an independent entity, Gypsies became easy prey as
scapegoats for the complex and violent societies of Europe. Some, in order to avoid
harassment and further persecution, attempted to integrate by becoming merchants or
wood carpenters, landowners, or musicians. It was said that the locals liked Gypsies’ dark
skin and that their musical talent was well accepted, because it helped the locals forget
19
the wounds of the bare existence for an evening. During the day, however, the life was
different. Unable to create harmony with their new surroundings, the majority of Gypsies
chose to remain nomads, live in forests, and keep close to their family and tribe. Those
who were too proud lived on the outskirts of society, always moving from one place to
another, never settling down, never growing roots, never registering or establishing solid
ties with the city and its inhabitants. They were called vagabonds, infiltrators, or spies. In
some European countries they even became legal prey. In early and mid 1500s most
European countries already implemented “Gypsy hunts,” or established laws to deport,
ban, or imprison Gypsies found on their soil (Tanner 1997):
Fear and suspicion sent them down that slippery slope until their standing was
such that the European gadje (non-Roma) chose to deal with the Roma in the
following ways: expulsion, repression, assimilation, sterilization, and later,
extermination. Repressive laws and expulsion orders reinforced their nomadic
lifestyle. England, France, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries, for
example, expelled the Roma. Those who managed to stay behind faced a threat of
being beaten or hanged. In parts of Europe, killing a Rom was legal. In early
eighteenth century Germany, the Germans held "Gypsy hunts" during which they
tracked down and killed the Roma. Sometimes, forest fires were set to drive them
out of hiding, forcing them to face either death by fire or death at the hands of
their hunters. Also, some areas tolerated the whipping and branding of Roma
women. The gadje (non-Rome) took Roma children and placed them permanently
in non-Gypsy homes, destroying Roma families (Miller 1998).
20
Figure 1: (l) Gypsy hunts took place at various stages in history (this particular picture depicts a
hunt in Germany, printed 1861), (r) some under parole “Fremde Bettlers und ander wiederliche
Gesindell sollen diese Lande bey Leip und Lebensstraffe meiden,” 1734 (courtesy of the Roma Center
for Public Policies).
In this whirlpool of persecution Gypsies continued to gather their tents and
belongings and wander to the next village, town, border and land. In their wanderings, as
they passed Hungary in 1761, the Queen of Hungary decided to grant them the status of
“New Hungarians,” and to outlaw Gypsy slavery and hunts:
They were given tools, seed, and animals for farming, despite the fact that they
had never shown any interest in farming. The Romani language was outlawed,
and they were not permitted to trade horses or to sleep in tents. The Queen's son
and successor carried on and implemented his mother's policies. Nomadic
communities were forced to settle, children were required to attend school and go
to church. Adolescent Roma were taken from their families to learn trades. Roma
music was prohibited, except on special holidays. All these measures failed,
however, and by the nineteenth century the Roma had gained a certain amount of
21
freedom (Tanner 1997). Because of their constant need to move, most Gypsies
could not be forced to adopt the enforcement laws.
Figure 2: A Gypsy family on a move. This lifestyle sentenced many families to death (courtesy of
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
But for the most of them, the wide open fields, and the thick forests of Hungary
and its territories provided a possible home. Some stayed in the heart of Hungarian
territory and settled there, some kept moving, trying to find a piece of land to call their
own. By the beginning of 19th century, Gypsies had settled in various countries
throughout Europe. In most countries they were despised and rejected, and had very little
or nothing. In a few, however, they were accepted and granted some liberties. These
liberties and rights helped the integration process and in these lands most Gypsy
populations differed only in skin color from the “natives.” Romanian, Hungarian and
Yugoslavian territory proved to be the lands best suited for the Gypsies, due to their
efforts to grant Gypsies freedoms and rights. These lands had already noticed the dark
skinned people toward the late 1200s and recorded their movement in local official
documents:
22
The Roma of the southern Slavic lands and Albania entered the region in much
the same fashion, as did other Gypsy groups in the Balkans during the middle
Ages. The first recorded mention of them in the region was in Macedonia in 1289,
though, like many early accounts about the presence of Gypsies in the Balkans,
these tales are often shrouded in myth…The first concrete evidence of Gypsies in
the southern Slavic part of the Balkans comes in a document from the Republic of
Ragusa, now the city of Dubrovnik plus several islands to the northwest in
Croatia, on November 5th 1362 (Crowe 195).
The culturally diverse lands welcomed yet another race with little notice, but also
with fewer prejudices, and “Gypsies were not persecuted as much in Balkan lands as in
Western Europe” (Ackovic 28, my translation). Wandering caravans that made it into the
Balkan lands pitched tents, looked at the land and at nature, and decided to stay.
Figure 3: A shop owner from Nish, Serafetin Jasic (1899-1963) with his wife and son, date of the
photograph unknown; a girl and her brother in front of their house in Nish (lower Serbia), picture
taken in 1934, “Serbian bride” with her husband, picture taken in 1940 ( courtesy of Bahtalo Drom
Roma TV and Radio station).
23
Most Gypsies settled in lower Serbia, even though some laws, such as the
“Regulation of the Serbian Principality of 1835” curtailed some of their freedoms, and
forced them to give up their nomadic lifestyle. Others settled in the territories of Kosovo,
Macedonia or in Vojvodina, while a smaller number wandered off toward Croatia, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, and parts of Slovenia. Many caravans stopped in Montenegro, one of
the few regions in the Balkans, which did not persecute them and, as early as 1427, even
established a law to protect the wandering caravans. In 1829 this law was reinforced
under the slogan: “None should touch the caravans, but let them go where the road takes
them” (Ackovic 57, my translation). Those who lived on the territory of Serbia continued
their craftsmanship, such as woodwork, became merchants (usually dealing with horses),
or remained faithful to their love for music and entertainment. They had land and
property; their children received education and served in the military side by side with the
children of the natives. In time, ““Bijeli” or white Gypsies would come to “deny their
Gypsy origin,” and began to marry with the non-Gypsy population, which paved the way
for their integration into southern Slavic society” (Crowe 199). They were respected;
however, it was not known that their heritage was Gypsy. Often it was safer and brought
more profit to keep that secret. Most census forms until 1948 in Yugoslavia did not even
show a rubric “Gypsy,” and Gypsies chose to remain silent before authorities knowing
the fickle nature of laws circulating around Europe.
24
Figure 4: A salesman Nazif Useinović with wife Nasifom, their son Šefitom, daughter in law
Jelduzom, daughter and granddaughter Menekšom, taken in 1919 and another picture of a Roma
woman, name or date unknown ( courtesy of Bahtalo Drom Roma TV and Radio Station and Nenad
Jasic).
Figure 5: Orchestra in Ribarska Banja (lower Serbia) between the wars (from left to right: Demir,
Nedžip, Salija, Alija, Radovan, Kalča i Šefit); a picture of a merchant Osman Balic (1880-1945) and
his wife, taken in 1905 (courtesy of Bahtalo Drom Roma TV and Radio station).
Final Solution and the Question of Gypsies:
Though many Gypsies attempted to integrate, and though many turned from their
traditional way of life in tents, woods and the outskirts cities, their dark skin and low
status in society branded them. “Scholars in Germany and elsewhere in Europe were
writing about Roma and Jews as being inferior beings, the excrement of humanity”:
25
In a society that was becoming increasingly urbanized and industrialized, Gypsies
had to abandon some of their old trades, and many became impoverished and
dependent on local welfare. Still, they resisted becoming wage laborers as well as
they could. Industrial production displaced the making of articles for hawking and
many turned to peddling machine-made goods brought from wholesalers, moving
from village to town. Most of them became sedentary during winter months, but,
following seasonal occupations, they continued their independent and nomadic
way of life during the summer (Lewy 4).
Figure 6: Lieutenant Memed Memedovic, a musician by profession, played for the king before
WWII, picture taken between the world wars; a military orchestra, picture taken in 1954 (courtesy of
Bahtalo Drom Roma TV and Radio station).
Their refusal to completely give up their freedoms and way of life was considered
heretic in Germany, because “they were breaking many of the Hanseatic laws which
made it a punishable offence not to have a permanent home or job, and not to be on the
taxpayer's register” (Hancock 1997). In accordance with intellectual advancements came
new sets of prejudices. In 1899 Houston Chamberlain published The Foundations of the
26
19th Century, which advocated the building of a “newly shaped ... and ... especially
deserving Aryan race.” This “ was used to justify the promotion of ideas about German
racial superiority, as well as any oppressive action taken against members of ‘inferior’
populations” (Hancock 2003:4). In that same year, the ‘Gypsy Information Agency’ was
set up in Munich under the direction of Alfred Dillmann, which began logging data on all
Gypsies throughout the German territory. A few years later in 1905 the results were
published in the Zigeuner=Buch:
Dillman issued a compilation of all the data collected until then in a publication
called Zigeunerbuch. In addition to all relevant laws and administrative
regulations affecting Gypsies, the Gypsy Book included 3,350 names and more
detailed information about 611 persons; 435 individuals were classified as
Gypsies, 176 as Gypsy-like itinerants. It identified 477 persons having a criminal
record, most charged with petty crimes such as begging, not having a license to
carry on an itinerant trade or theft. The book was printed in edition of 7,000
copies (Lewy 6).
27
Figure 7: Scheme for the racial classification of Gypsies according to the ‘racial makeup’ of their
four grandparents: depending on the number of pure Gypsy grandparents, one was classified as pure
Gypsy (four grandparents Gypsy or where one grandparent was partially Gypsy and the rest pure),
mix Gypsy (one with less than 3 grandparents pure Gypsy), and not Gypsy (one half or one-fourth
Gypsy of a single grandparent, while other 3 grandparents German ) (courtesy of Bundesarchiv in
Berlin) and title page of the Zigeuner=Buch issued by the Munich police in 1905 (courtesy of
Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in Munich, both pictures extracted from Guenther Lewy 44, 6).
The purpose of the nearly 350 pages long research was to identify, by name and
picture, all Gypsies as a “plague” and a “menace” against which the German population
had to defend itself using “ruthless punishments.” The book also “warned of the dangers
of mixing the Roma and German gene pools. Dillmann’s ideas about ‘racial mixing’ later
became a central part of the Nuremberg Law in Nazi Germany” (Hancock 2003:4). The
book also attempted to settle the long debate about the classification of Gypsies as a
people, race, or a nation, since some who had assimilated and integrated were living in
mixed homes, while others “roamed” around in their caravans. It was suggested that all
people who were classified as Gypsies according to the teachings of ethnology on racial
characteristics of a Gypsy, as well as all who roamed around like Gypsies, were to be
28
persecuted, and special caution was to be taken when coming in contact with them. Their
racial qualities and lifestyle made them “unsafe:”
The fact that the German states had no uniform legislation dealing with the Gypsy
“problem” made it somewhat easier to evade the most stringent controls. Each
jurisdiction sought above all to get rid of its own Gypsies as quickly as possible;
in practice this meant that Gypsies were continuously being pushed across
borders. In order to put an end to this situation, in 1911…various representatives
were invited to discuss united action. Not surprisingly, the conferees had
differences of opinion…Eventually an agreement was reached on a compromise
formula: Gypsies, in the eyes of the police, are those who are Gypsies according
to the teachings of ethnology as well as those who roam about in the manner of
Gypsies (Lewy 7).
During the years between the wars, the life of Gypsies in Yugoslavia became
more balanced and stabilized. As part of regional communities within Yugoslavia,
Gypsies prospered and embraced the idea of belonging to a land and people, and they
pledged their loyalty to the kingdom. They fought in World War I and supported the
homeland, and since then “they played an active role in the war in Serbia and suffered
heavy losses in the conflict as a result. While no statistics are available, indications are
that Rom civilian and military deaths were high” (Crowe 211). Because they pledged
allegiance to Serbia, Gypsies felt it their duty to share the fate which fell upon the
Serbian people, and, though hard times characterized the years between the two World
Wars, and “despite the changes and chaos in the Balkans at the end of World War I,
Gypsy life remained vibrant…Roma music, for example, remained central to Serbian life
29
and reflected, particularly in the years after World War I, the relief felt by all after the
war’s end. The Roma were affected by land reform efforts in Yugoslavia and began to
settle (similar efforts had taken place earlier in Serbia)” (Crowe 213, 214).
In the rest of Europe, laws against Gypsies and Jews got worse and tightened as
the years elapsed. Soon after the World War I, in 1920, Gypsies were forbidden to enter
parks and public baths in any German city. In 1925 a conference on "The Gypsy
Question" was held in Bavaria by the Bavarian Ministry of Interior, resulting in laws
requiring unemployed Roma to be sent to work camps "for reasons of public security,"
and for all Roma to be registered with the police. After 1927, all Roma, even children,
had to carry identification cards, bearing fingerprints and photographs. In 1929, The
Central Office for the Fight Against the Gypsies in Germany was established in Munich,
and in 1933, just ten days before the Nazis came to power, government officials in
Burgenland called for the withdrawal of all civil rights from the Roma people (Hancock
1997). However, all these measures still left the authorities unsatisfied, and further racial
laws were issued, to set Gypsies and Jews apart as a race:
Bereits im Jahre 1931 hatte eine Stelle der SS in München mit der Erfassung der
„Juden und Zigeuner“, der beiden so genannten „außereuropäischen
Fremdrassen“, begonnen. Vom Beginn der NS-Herrschaft an, wurden Sinti und
Roma ebenso wie Juden aus rassistischen Gründen verfolgt und ausgegrenzt.
Gleich 1933 verlangte das „Rasse und Siedlungsamt“ der SS in Berlin, dass
„Zigeuner und Zigeunermischlinge“ in der Regel unfruchtbar gemacht werden.
Die „Nürnberger Gesetze“ des Jahre 1935 stellten Sinti und Roma in der
gesetzlichen Verfolgung mit den Juden gleich. Und bereits am 3. Januar 1936
30
verfügte der Minister des Innern, Frick, in einer vertraulichen Mitteilung an alle
Landesregierung, Standesämter, Aufsichtsbehörden und Gesundheitsämter die
Anwendung des Blutschutzgesetzes an und bemerkte: „Zu den artfremden Rassen
gehören alle anderen Rassen, das sind in Europa außer den Juden regelmäßig nur
die Zigeuner“ (Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung 18).
Once they came to power, National Socialists used the already existing antiSemitic notions to promote their policies. However, in the case of Gypsies, Hitler and his
followers faced a difficulty:
The Roma presented a problem for Hitler. The racist policies he directed against
the Jews were based on the fact that they were non-Aryans. The Roma were one
of the oldest Aryan groups in Europe and did not fit into this category. At first, the
Hitler regime tried to force German scholars to deny the truth, and to state that
Roma were not Aryans. However, many scholars refused to follow Hitler's
demands, often resulting in their own imprisonment. The Nazis soon abandoned
the non-Aryan argument, and they created other reasons for doing away with the
Roma. According to Nazi policy the Roma were not Nordic. They were "asocial,"
"subhuman beings" and members of a "lower race" (Tanner 1997).
And, as such, Hitler felt an urgency to control their movement, and limit their numbers:
As a means of creating a pure "Aryan" race, in July of 1933, Hitler's cabinet
passed a law against the propagation of "lives not worthy of life" called the "Law
for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring." Because the Nazis
considered the Roma to be unworthy of life, they were to be sterilized along with
31
anyone with "genetically determined" illnesses such as schizophrenia, manicdepressive illness, and deafness (Miller 1998).
The political situation in Yugoslavia became tense toward the early 1930s. Paul,
the prince regent, fought to maintain the civil stability as fractions of the country grew
rebellious and Croatian intellectuals looked at the example of Germany and Austria,
desiring to be separated from Serbia and Montenegro. The unrest, insecurity of the
regions, and Paul’s difficulty in ruling over the country did not leave any time to openly
condemn the policies implemented by Germany. Luckily, these policies had no effect
upon Gypsies living in Yugoslavia:
Prince Paul, the regent for the new monarch, Peter II (ruled from 1934-1945),
struggled to keep the country together and to seek some solution to the growing
friction between the Croats, who wanted greater autonomy, and the Serbdominated government…Gypsy life in Yugoslavia during this unsettling period
was vibrant, while Roma intellectuals struggled to define the unique, positive
characteristics of Gypsy ethnic identity…Rebecca West noted in Black Lamb and
Grey Falcon at least one positive Serbian view of the Rom: “In the eastern parts
of Yugoslavia, in Serbia and in Macedonia, the Gypsies are proud of being
Gypsies, and other people, which is to say the peasants, for there are practically
none other, honor them for their qualities, for their power of making beautiful
music and dancing, which the peasants lack, and envy them for being exempt
from the necessities of toil and order which lie so heavily on the peasants.” Her
Serbian companion, a Yugoslav official, went on to explain that while the
Austrians and the Germans “despised the Gypsies” because of their poverty, lack
32
of hygiene, and questionable musical talents, the “Serbs are not bourgeois, so
none of these reasons make us hate the Gypsies” (Crowe 218).
However, even though the new policies were of little concern to the Gypsies in
Yugoslavia, the silence against them only encouraged further policy establishments, and
slowly Europe began to sink into racial hatred against the non-Christian, non-White
population. In his eagerness to find a solution to the “unsafe” Gypsies, Hitler continued to
launch more rigorous offensives against Jews and Gypsies. One such offensive was the
creation of the Research Institute for Racial Hygiene and Population Biology:
Die Nationalsozialisten standen allerdings… zunächst einmal vor dem Problem
der „Rassendiagnose“. Deshalb wurde im November 1936 im
Reichsgesundheitsamt in Berlin das „Rassenhygieneinstitut“ unter der Leitung des
Tübinger Kinder- und Nervenarztes Dr. Robert Ritter eingerichtet (Landeszentrale
für Politische Bildung 18).
It was hoped that this institute would solve the pressing question of classifying Gypsies:
A recurring problem that arose in connection with the enforcement of various
laws and decrees directed against the Gypsies was determining who counted as a
Gypsy. This issue became especially acute after the enactment of the Nuremberg
Laws, which used racial criteria. Membership in the racial category “Jew” was
based on the religious affiliation of parents and grandparents. However, no such
simple criterion applied to Gypsies who were Christians and in many cases had
intermarried with the local population. Some had become sedentary and were not
easily identifiable as Gypsies. In order to solve this problem, the Ministry of the
Interior in the spring of 1936 ordered the establishment of a research Institute in
33
the Reich Health Office. The central task of this institute, located in Berlin and
called Rassenhygienische und bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle, was to
collect information about Germany’s non sedentary population, especially
Gypsies and Zigeunermischlinge (mixed parents). These data were to be used by
the Kripo and other official agencies in addressing the “Gypsy problem.” In
addition, the information collected was to be used in formulating a law dealing
with the Gypsy issue, which had been under discussion since early 1936 (Lewy
43).
In order to learn more about the Gypsies, the teams from “the Institute toured
cities and countryside, educational institutions and Gypsy camps, prisons and
concentration camps” collecting various data (see Fig.8 and 9), such as eye color, shape
and size of head, height, physical complexion (Lewy 45). As the studies were conducted,
Robert Ritter, the team’s leader proposed certain measures to the Reich Office in how to
combat the Gypsy issues, by suggesting extensive sterilization as a means of stopping
their increase:
In a study published in 1937, Gypsy specialist Robert Ritter describes a type of
children who were able to display “a certain independence and cunning and
especially were quick talkers.” This kind of disorder, he characterized most
appropriately as disguised mental retardation.” Needless to say, such an approach
allowed mental retardation to be established in almost any kind of case. The
categories of moral and disguised mental retardation became an instrument to
sterilize “asocial” individuals about whom no proof of a genuine mental deficit
was available (Lewy 40, 41, italics added).
34
During the research, Eva Justin, one of Ritter’s assistants, concluded Ritter’s
observations by saying that “Gypsies could not be integrated because they were racially
inferior.” She ended her statement calling for a general rule of sterilization of all Gypsies
(Sonneman 195).
Figure 8: Eva Justin, an assistant in the Research Institute for Racial Hygiene and Population
Biology, measuring the head of a Gypsy woman, around 1938, and also checking eye color for racial
classification, also around late 1938 (courtesy of Bundesarchiv Koblenz, picture extracted from
Guenther Lewy 46, and second picture courtesy of Roma Center for Public Policies).
Sterilization was used since the 1920s under the “Forderung des ‘Rasse-und
Siedlungsamtes’ der SS in Berlin,” which called for sterilization of Gypsies. These
sterilizations, however, were ‘voluntary’:
Criteria for classification as a Rom were twice as strict as those applied to Jews. If
two of a person's eight great-grandparents were even part-Rom, that person "had
too much Gypsy blood to be allowed to live." According to the Nazi hierarchical
system, Roma belonged with Jews at the bottom of the racial scale… To the
Nazis, being a Rom meant being diseased, so these prisoners were sterilized to
35
prevent them from spreading this disease by reproduction. Some Roma were
sterilized as early as 1933, though no Jews had yet been (Tanner 1997).
After 1933, the sterilizations became compulsory, frequent, and “forced upon Gypsies as
a choice instead of deportation to a concentration camp” (Romani Rose 89, my
translation):
Sterilization of ‘inferior’ people was one of the first measures Nazis proposed in
order to improve selective breeding. Precedent for such ‘negative selection’ had
been applied in the United States in 1899, when a prison doctor developed the
vasectomy and used the procedure on prisoners. Nazis proposed sterilization as
early as the 1920’s but it was not until Hitler took power that a compulsory
sterilization law was issued, in July 1933. The law ordered sterilization of all
those suffering from a hereditary illnesses, and such dubious characteristics as
‘feeblemindedness’ and chronic alcoholism were attributed to
heredity…Sterilization was still being proposed as a way to stop procreation of
inferior races, notably, Jews and Gypsies. It was only a short step from the
sterilization of those with ‘hereditary illnesses’ to the sterilization of Gypsies.
Although sterilization for racial reasons was illegal, it was simple enough to
classify the victims as ‘feebleminded,’ a category defined more by social criteria
than by medical formulations, and it was also useful to classify people as
criminal. So, in 1939, when Dr. Johannes Behrendt of the Office of Racial
Hygiene wrote an article entitled “the Truth about the Gypsies,” reporting that
Gypsies were ‘criminal and asocial and …impossible to educate,” he claimed that
they “should therefore be treated as hereditary sick.” This logic led quite naturally
36
to his conclusion: “The aim should therefore be elimination without hesitation of
this characteristically defective element in the population. This should be done by
locking them all up and sterilizing them” (Sonneman 193, 194).
Gypsies did not know that the sterilizations were to be conducted alongside with
deportation to concentration camps. The Stadtskomandant in Essling, Landjäger,
commented in November 1937 on the legal sterilizations, saying:
The Gypsy is and remains a parasite on the people who supports himself almost
exclusively by begging and stealing…The Gypsy can never be educated to
become a useful person. For this reason it is necessary that the Gypsy tribe be
exterminated [ausgerottet] by way of sterilization or castration. With the help of
such a law the Gypsy plague would soon be eliminated. I am firmly convinced
that an appreciable number of these fellows would immediately cross the border
in full flight; the number of the remaining Gypsies would decrease from year to
year and they would become superannuated. Such a measure would not cost the
state very much money, and within a short span of time the Gypsy plague would
be eliminated (Lewy 50).
As if to fulfill Landjäger’s words, the rope around the Gypsies necks was tightened:
In September 1935, Roma became subject to the restrictions of the Nuremberg
Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, which forbade intermarriage
between Germans and "non-Aryans," specifically Jews, Roma, and people of
African descent. In 1937, the National Citizenship Law relegated Roma and Jews
to the status of second-class citizens, depriving them of their civil rights. Also in
1937, Heinrich Himmler issued a decree entitled "The Struggle Against the Gypsy
37
Plague," which reiterated that Roma of mixed blood were the most likely to
engage in criminal activity, and which required that all information on Roma be
sent from the regional police departments to the Reich Central Office. Between
June 12th and June 18th 1938, Gypsy Clean-Up Week took place throughout
Germany, which, like Kristallnacht for the Jewish people that same year, marked
the beginning of the end. Also in 1938, the first reference to "The Final Solution
of the Gypsy Question" appeared, in a document signed by Himmler on
December 8th that year (Hancock 1997).
It seemed as if sterilization would not be enough to appease National Socialists. In
August, 1938 Himmler’s Rassenforscher, Dr. Adolf Würth, issued a statement regarding
the “Zigeunerfrage” as a “in erster Linie eine Rassenfrage.” He also suggested, “That just
as the state was dealing with the question of the Jews, it will also deal with the question
of the Gypsies” (Romani Rose 89, my translation).
Figure 9: Research conducted on Roma, to identify why they were a subhuman even though they
counted as “Aryan,” involved taking multiple measurements, data, pictures and making wax castes
of Roma faces for better research (courtesy of the Roma Center for Public Policies).
38
Soon after his statement in March 1939, further measures were taken:
Im „Altreich” werden Verordnungen zur besonderen Kennzeichnung der Sinti
und Roma erlassen und besondere „Rassenausweise“ ausgegeben. Später werden
auch in den besetzten Gebieten entsprechende Vorschriften für Sinti und Roma
erlassen: Ihre Ausweise werden mit einem „Z“ versehen; vielerorts müssen sie
wie die Juden besondere Armbinden tragen (Romani Rose 90).
Figure 10: Map detailing Gypsy population distribution throughout Europe prior to the outbreak of
World War II. These numbers are estimates, since in many countries Roma and Sinti did not declare
themselves as such (courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
By the outbreak of World War II, just as in the case of Jews, laws were not in
favor of Gypsies:
It comes as no surprise that the Roma, in addition to the Jews, came under the
restrictions of the Nuremberg Law for the Protection of Blood and Honor, which
forbade the intermarriage or sexual relationships between Aryan and non-Aryan
39
peoples. A more strict definition of "Gypsy" came about in 1938. A person could
be judged as having too much "Gypsy blood" to be allowed to live if two of the
individual's eight great-grandparents were even part Gypsy (Miller 1998).
The Final Solution had not yet been finalized in writing; however, its beginnings
were there on paper and in oral communications. Still, Gypsies could not dream of the
final outcome, nor did they dare imagine anything worse than the legal hunts,
discrimination, and persecution they had experienced since entering Europe:
Die Absicht der Nazis zur endgültigen „Lösung der Zigeunerfrage“, so immer
wieder ihre Sprache, stand von Anfang an und lange vor Kriegsbeginn fest. Es
ging nur noch um den pseudowissenschaftlichen Vorwand, um die
organisatorischen Voraussetzungen und die Detailmaßnahmen zur Durchführung
des Völkermordes. Die in den Hetzkampagnen der NS-Presse verbreiteten
Verleumdungen wurden von Nazi-Wissenschaftlern zu „rassenbiologischen
Erkenntnissen“ hochgestapelt. Im Grunde aber betrieb das Berliner „Institut für
Rassenhygiene“ nichts anderes als eine systematische Ausgrenzung und
Erfassung, auf deren Grundlage die Nazis 500.000 Sinti und Roma bestialisch
ermordeten. Die so genannten „Rassengutachten“, (d.h. die gutachterlichen
Äußerungen der Rassenhygienischen Forschungsstelle), unterzeichnet von Ritter,
Justin, Erhardt, Würth und anderen, waren die Todesurteile, die den Ausschlag für
die Deportation in die Konzentrationslager gaben (Landeszentrale für Politische
Bildung 19).
40
Deportations of Gypsies began at the same time as the deportations of Jews. In
Germany they were first interned in police stations, while those who found themselves in
the invaded states, i.e. Baltic States, Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Italy,
Hungary and the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe, were forced into camps for later
extermination, or if they resisted too much, they were shot on the spot in villages and
forests (Tanner 1997). Since October 17, 1939, “allen Sinti und Roma wurde unter
Androhung von KZ-Haft verboten, ihre Heimatorte zu verlassen, so that regular
collections to Sammellager could take place. With each transport of Jews to
concentration camps, the SS also requested three to four wagons of Gypsies, in order to
effectively deal with the “unworthy sub-humans” (Romani Rose 91, my translation). The
Final Solution of the Jewish question soon became two-fold since there was the question
not only of the Jews, but also of the Gypsies:
Heydrich, who had been entrusted with the "final solution of the Jewish question"
on 31 July 1941, shortly after the German invasion of the USSR, also included the
Gypsies in his "final solution." The senior SS officer and Chief of Police for the
East, Dr. Landgraf, in Riga, informed Rosenberg's Reich Commissioner for the
East, Lohse, of the inclusion of the Gypsies in the "final solution." Thereupon,
Lohse gave the order, on 24 December 1941, that the Gypsies "should be given
the same treatment as the Jews." At about the same time, Adolf Eichmann made
the recommendation that the "Gypsy Question" be solved simultaneously with the
"Jewish Question." Himmler signed the order dispatching Germany's Sinti and
Roma to Auschwitz on 16 December 1942. The "Final Solution" of the "Gypsy
Question" had begun at virtually the same moment it can be said to have really
41
gotten underway for the Jews. Indeed, Gypsies were automatically subject to
whatever policies applied to Jews during the entire period of the Final Solution,
pursuant to a directive issued by Himmler on 24 December 1941 (i.e., four
months prior to the Wannsee Conference which set the full-fledged extermination
program in motion). Hence, the fate of Gypsies was not to be distinguished from
the fate of the Jews (Churchill 1997).
Figure 11: Once deportations began, Gypsies were rounded up in two “bundles”: from cities and
from forests. If they led a nomadic lifestyle, often they were abused, maltreated, and forced to dig
their own grave. Under some special killing units women were also raped and then all were shot and
left there. No name, no number, no witnesses (courtesy of the Roma Center for Public Policies).
42
Thus, Jews and Gypsies became a racial threat to the pure “Aryan race,” and as
such needed to be disposed of.
Figure 12: Map detailing concentration camps with large population of Roma and Sinti (courtesy of
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
Some of the round-ups proceeded in the same manner as the round up of the Jews.
One of the transit camps was provided as a “rest station” before the prisoners were
shipped off to an extermination camp. The conditions of life were equally difficult, and
often Gypsies were forced under harsh circumstances to dig graves, work in factories, or
in workshops:
Even before the outbreak of the war, the Nazis had attempted to register the
Gypsies and limit their freedom to move from place to place. Some were placed
in concentration camps under the pretext of campaigns against antisocial
elements. After the invasion of Poland, it was decided to resettle the Gypsies from
the Reich to the General Government. After their removal from Germany they
43
were settled in Jewish ghettos and camps for Jews…There are no surviving
written instructions or orders on the aim of placing Gypsies in the camp or the
way they were to be treated…Nevertheless, it was common knowledge that the
will of the almighty Reichführer was to ‘make all Gypsies disappear from the face
of the earth (Dlugoborski 52, 54, 55).
Figure 13: Auschwitz Memorial Book-The Gypsies at Auschwitz-Birkenau (Munich-London-New
York-Paris, 1993). This map does not include approximately 1,700 Polish Gypsies from the Bialystok
region who were killed without being registered, several hundred Gypsies registered outside the
Gypsy “family camp” in Birkenau, or several hundred Gypsies for whom the entries in the family
camp record book are illegible, but it gives the number of Gypsy transports on the European soil to
Auschwitz: Yugoslavia 125, Hungary 34, Slovakia 1, Germany 13 108, Poland 1273 etc. For further
detailed statistics refer to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum publications (courtesy of AuschwitzBirkenau State Museum Dlugoborski Vol.III, 53).
44
Once they arrived in the extermination camps, Gypsies seemed to have gained a
reputation of the worst kind, and special sections were built under the title
“Zigeunerlager” to “accommodate” them. For some time these camps proved to be a
blessing, since families were allowed to stay together. More often, however, they were
camps used for experiments, and Gypsies were submitted to medical tests:
The program of extermination carried out by the Third Reich extended not only to
Jews and to Slavic nations, but also to the Gypsies. Himmler believed that they
‘should be eliminated from Europe as a race of little value.’ In December 1942, he
issued an order that all Gypsies (with the exception of the Sinti and Lalleri
branches) found in the territory of the Reich and the Protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia were to be arrested without regard to age or sex and confined in
concentration camps, where they were to ‘remain’ until the end of the war
(Dlugoborski 235).
When Josef Mengele arrived at Auschwitz, he was named head physician in the
“Gypsy camp.” That is where he began his research. His special interest fell on the study
of twins. To further his research, Mengele spread diseases, such as “water cancer”
(gangrene of the cheek, or noma faciei), which was unknown elsewhere in Auschwitz,
and which slowly began spreading in the Gypsy camp (Dlugoborski 261).
Next to the experiments conducted on them, Gypsies still endured forced
sterilizations. Often new methods of experimental sterilization were performed, in order
to find the cheapest ways of preventing further increase of undesirables:
“We do not know exactly how many Gypsies were sterilized,” noted historian
Henry Friedlander, “but we do know that the numbers were large enough to
45
support the conclusion that sterilization of Gypsies was a calculated policy.” In
1938, drawing on the recommendations of Dr. Ritter, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler
had ordered that all Gypsies over the age of twelve were to be sterilized. The
policy was carried out not only on prisoners but also on those exempted from the
concentration camps. Himmler’s order to send the Gypsies to Auschwitz in 1943
had excluded those still serving in the military or the soldiers who had been
wounded or released with decorations. The application of this order was erratic,
however, many servicemen, […], showed up in Auschwitz, some even wearing
uniforms with war decorations. Shortly before the liquidation of the Gypsy camp
at Auschwitz-Birkenau, officials announced that veterans who volunteered to be
sterilized would then be freed. The offer was false, of course; they were not freed
after sterilization (Sonneman 198).
The fates, which befell Gypsies in other European states under Nazi rule, did not
reach those who lived on the territory of Yugoslavia at the outbreak of the war. Once,
however, Germany and its allies absorbed Yugoslavia, the future seemed bleaker for
many of the Gypsies in Croatia:
The richness and diversity of Roma life in the regions of Yugoslavia with the
greatest Gypsy concentrations-Serbia and Macedonia would be severely damaged
by the excesses of World War II. Prior to Yugoslavia’s invasion by the Axis
Powers in 1941, Prince Paul tried to maneuver his country through the complex,
dangerous waters of the times in an attempt to preserve his country’s neutrality.
Although he was initially sympathetic to the Allied side, he finally succumbed to
German pressure to join the Tripartite Pact alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan.
46
As Yugoslav diplomats signed the accord in Berlin on March 26, 1941, a coup
took place in Belgrade that removed Prince Paul as regent. Ten days later, a
German-led coalition of Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania invaded
Yugoslavia…What invaders did not absorb was transformed into puppet Croatian
and Serbian states…Approximately 28,500 Roma were trapped in the NDH
(Independent Croatian State or Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska) in 1941, which
included most of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while many Gypsies who had earlier fled
to Italian territory were put in detention camps in Sardinia or Puglia. Those who
entered Italy after the creation of NDH in 1941 were watched to try to keep them
from reentering Croatia to help relatives. The Italians, who had no tolerance for
the genocidal policies of their allies, also gave some Rom “Italian identity cards to
put them further beyond the reach of the Nazis and the Ustasha until 1943,” while
those who were “caught in the German dragnet…were sent to camps in Austria
for extermination” (Crowe 218,219).
The two regions, Serbia and Croatia reacted differently to the invasion. While one
resisted the rule of the puppet regime and protected its various ethnicities, the other
seemed to embrace this newfound freedom and to inhale the Aryan ideology, which
brought many ethnicities on its soil heartache, grief, and eventually a tormented death.
47
Chapter 2:
Yugoslavia: the case of Croatia and Serbia
As National Socialists gained power and influence in Germany, their propaganda
and teachings found support from political factions all over Europe. Thus, it is not
surprising that the National Socialist’s ideas also gained support in a few of Yugoslavia’s
political factions. They presented to these factions a possible solution to the on-going
political and social struggles. The possible relationship with Germany, the teachings of a
“super race,” and a desire for new leadership was greatly welcomed in some intellectual
circles in Croatia and Serbia. As a multiethnic country with various religions and political
aspirations, Yugoslavia was in a transition state. Prince regent Paul “labored hard to
achieve internal stability” and keep everyone satisfied (Cohen 21). The political factions
with national socialist sentiments became his greatest struggle:
The Yugoslav Action movement (active in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia) was
formed in Belgrade in 1930 and, within three years, was calling for a totalitarian
state. Soon, the Yugoslav Action adopted symbols imitative of the Nazis.
Appropriating a blue swastika as their symbol and the raising of the right hand as
their salute, they attracted considerable interest in Berlin. In 1934, Viktor von
Heeren, the German envoy in Belgrade, reported to his Ministry of Foreign
Affairs that the Yugoslav Action “shows a kinship with National Socialism, even
in its external characteristics” (Cohen 12).
Besides the struggles within the country, Paul was experiencing persistent
pressure from Italy. The immediate neighboring country wished to incorporate
Yugoslavia as their ally and use the national socialistic and fascist sentiments within the
48
country to further Italy’s advancement on the continent. Paul feared Italy’s ulterior
motives to be the annexation of the Croatian and Slovenian coast, and resisted reaching
any agreement while at the same time remaining in communication to prevent the outrage
of the factions within his country that supported Italian Fascism and German National
Socialism. Despite all the inner turmoil and pressure, Yugoslavia’s political neutrality
held until early 1941. As Germany kept on advancing all around the Balkan state, it
became evident that Yugoslavia needed to be incorporated, since Yugoslavia was a
bridge to Africa and the Middle East. Hitler lived in belief that this country too would
join the Axis, and continued pushing Paul to reach a final decision and tie Yugoslavia to
Germany. For this reason the Führer met with the prince regent multiple times in the mid
and late1930s:
Hitler's demands and offers were reported to be Yugoslavia's adherence to the
Axis, the prohibition of all anti-Axis agitation in Yugoslavia (which of course
amounted to a suppression of democratic freedom), the opening up of
Yugoslavia's railroads for the transport of German war materials, a guarantee of
the inviolability of Yugoslav territory and finally the promise of territorial
expansion at the expense of Greece. Some of the ministers resigned in protest
against any agreement with Germany, which would definitely bind Yugoslavia to
the Axis and the so-called "New World Order." The negotiations lasted for the
whole month of March, with conflicting reports as to the strength of the two
opposed factions in Yugoslavia. Finally yielding to a German Ultimatum, the
Yugoslav government on March 22nd decided to sign, and on March 25th the
49
Yugoslav prime minister and foreign minister affixed their signatures in Vienna to
the Axis pact (Encyclopedia Britannica 1943, 23:923).
Surrounded by Axis Powers on all sides, the Yugoslavian government saw no other
solution but to join the Axis pact:
At the beginning of the 40's, Yugoslavia found itself surrounded by hostile
countries. Except for Greece, all other neighboring countries had signed
agreements with either Germany or Italy. Hitler was strongly pressuring
Yugoslavia to join the Axis powers. The government was even prepared to reach
a compromise with him, but the spirit in the country was completely different.
Public demonstrations against Nazism prompted a brutal reaction (www.serbiainfo 2004).
Figure 1: Cartoons from Washington Post and Chicago Daily News, commenting the response of
theYugoslavian public to Nazi-Yugoslav Pact in 1941 (courtesy of Louise Adamic 385, 386).
50
While the signing took place in Vienna, and Yugoslavia officially joined the
German lines, public opinion in the country, especially in the territory of Serbia and
Montenegro, followed by some support in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia,
Macedonia, and Croatia, strongly demonstrated the Yugoslav rejection of Hitler:
On the surface it seemed unrealistic to expect a small country with an obsolete
army to refuse the pact and invite the Nazi Luftwaffe and panzer divisions to do
their worst…The announcement that the Belgrade regime had signed the pact was
followed by a depressing lull in news. Hitler was having it his way after all.
German troops would go through Yugoslavia to invade Greece…Then came the
climax of March 27th. Two days prior to the climax, on March 25th, children in
different parts of the country started to pound their school desks, to shout and
chalk on blackboards and walls insulting remarks about the Belgrade regime and
Hitler. Grimfaced peasants poured into the capital. Some had guns under their
cloaks. They were summoned by no manifesto, no organized call. They followed
an instinctive revolutionary urge. The humiliation that Hitler and their own
government were trying to impose on them was more than they could bear. City
folk mingled with them…Small crowds moved about or stood in the streets,
quietly. No speeches. People hummed old Serbian songs, at once sad and joyful,
full of meaning beyond translation, but saying in effect that sometimes your
country comes to such a pass that it is your lot to die in the interest of life
(Adamic 369).
51
Figure 2: The new government, with Dusan Simovic (third to the left) young Prince Peter II, and his
uncle, Prince regent Paul, who conducted the political affairs until the cup of March 27 (courtesy of
Yugoslavian National Archives, arhiv.sv.gov.yu).
After two days of protests, demonstrations and revolts in the capital, “on March
27th in the early morning hours, the people and parts of the army…overthrew the
government, under the leadership of the chief of Yugoslav aviation, Gen. Dusan Simovic,
who became Prime Minister” (Encyclopedia Britannica 1943, 23:923). Prince Peter II
was installed as the ruling king, being only seventeen at the time. This new government,
principally under the leadership of the Prime Minister Simovic, declined to ratify
Yugoslav’s signature, claiming they would “rather go to war than sign the pact, better go
to the grave than to be Germany’s slave.” In the heat of the climax, most Croatian and
some Serbian politicians and factions did not for a moment forget the agendas they
promoted, and though the public chanted and rejoiced, these factions wished to support
Germany. Besides the fear of German aggression and a possible attack through the
Croatian lowlands, Croatia also saw in this dissonance of opinions a way to detach itself
52
from Serbia’s governing imperative. The country now faced enemies within the country,
as well as without:
The heroic move on the part of the Serbs had come in a certain way too late. They
had decided to make a last stand for their liberties rather than submit to the Axis,
but they did it at time when they were practically surrounded on all sides by
German troops, which had by then occupied Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria, as
well as Austria, so that the Yugoslav army had to defend almost all the long
frontier (Encyclopedia Britannica 1943, 23:923).
Hitler was furious at the act of the Yugoslavian people, and used this as one of
many excuses to postpone his invasion of Russia and to invade Yugoslavia, the Russian
ally. “On March 27th, Hitler declared that he was determined to ‘destroy Yugoslavia as a
military power and a sovereign state,’ and ordered the Wehrmacht staff to complete
military preparation at the greatest possible speed” (Encyclopedia Americana 1993,
29:442). Despite the long military history and brave individuals, “Yugoslavia and its
army were unprepared” and not sufficiently equipped to stand the blow of Germany, who
was quick to promise chunks of land to Bulgaria, Hungary, and Albania if they joined in
the offensive (Adamic 361). The invasion and devastation of the country began from the
air, when “in the early morning of April 6, German planes bombed Belgrade. They came
in at rooftop level, and in an hour and a half killed more than 17,000 of the city's
inhabitants” (Encyclopedia Americana 1993, 29:443).
The air raid was followed by an attack on the ground, which advanced from
various directions in a synchronized manner:
53
On April 10, 1941, the German army struck from several directions, especially
from Bulgaria, and was supported in its efforts by the Italian army, and even by
the Hungarian army (in spite the treaty of everlasting peace and friendship which
had been concluded only a few weeks before) and the Bulgarian army. Against
the immense superiority in men and materials, the Yugoslav army, in spite of
courageous resistance, succumbed within two weeks (Encyclopedia Britannica
1943, 23:923).
Figure 8: Bombing and invasion of Belgrade began on April 6th, 1941 and lasted two weeks (courtesy
of serbia-info.com, World War II and its effects).
Figure 9: Cartoons from Washington Post and the Wilmington News, commenting Germany’s
advances on European soil in 1941(courtesy of Louis Adamic 388, 383).
54
On the Croatian front, “the Croat troops in the Yugoslav Fourth and Seventh
armies, stationed on the northern frontier, mutinied, and by nightfall both armies had
been dissolved. On the afternoon of April 10 the Second [German] Army troops entered
Zagreb,” where the Croat government welcomed and praised them as liberators
(Encyclopedia Americana 1993, 29:443). The “invasion of Yugoslavia by Nazi Germany
was an occasion for separatist Croatian forces to establish an Independent State of
Croatia under the protection of Hitler and Mussolini” (Dedijer 11). The Independent State
of Croatia was created to reflect the Third Reich with Ante Pavelic, a fascist ally, as the
leader, the “father of a nation.”
Figure 10: The invasion of Yugoslavia by Germany and German Allies, Hungary and Bulgaria, in
April 1941 (courtesy of National Archives and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
The establishment of the Independent State of Croatia initiated further division of
the Yugoslavian territory amongst Germany and its allies, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Italy:
The victors carved up the country. Germany and Italy divided Slovenia between
them. Italy took part of Dalmatia on its own behalf and the Kosovo district and
western Macedonia on behalf of Albania and set up a protectorate over
55
Montenegro. Bulgaria annexed most of Macedonia; Hungary annexed the western
half of Vojvodina (Backa) and some small districts on the Croatian border.
Patrons presented Pavelic (Croatian NDH leader) with the control of an
Independent State of Croatia; this included all Bosnia but not all Dalmatia and
was nominally a kingdom, with Aimone, duke of Spoleto, second son of the duke
of Aosta, as its absentee sovereign. The rump of Serbia was placed under German
military occupation and was allowed from August 1941 to have a puppet
government of its own under Gen. Milan Nedic. The eastern half of Vojvodina
(Banat) had a separate German military administration, in which members of the
local German minority played the chief part (Encyclopedia Britannica 1971,
23:922).
Figure 11: The partition of Yugoslavia in 1941 between Germany and the Allies Hungary, Bulgaria,
Italy, and Croatia (courtesy of National Archives and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
56
The revolt and freedom were short-lived, Germany and its allies took control of
the country, and “the gallant little country that dared to defy Hitler was pitilessly
smashed” (Levin 510). Yugoslavia collapsed as an organized state on April 17th 1941 and
the two regions Serbia and Croatia were left as puppet regimes:
Germans and Italians soon established puppet states in both Serbia and Croatia. In
Serbia, the Germans launched Operation Punishment, which razed Belgrade to the
ground and resulted in 17,000 civilian deaths. Soon after the Yugoslav
government fled, General Milan Nedic, Yugoslav’s former minister of war,
formed a ‘Government of National Salvation.’ In Croatia, the Independent State
of Croatia (NDH) was formed under Ante Pavelic, the leader of an Italian-trained
insurgency group, the Ustasha. While Serbs generally remained loyal to King
Aleksandar and the Yugoslav government in exile, many Croats saw NDH as
their liberation from over two decades of Serbian control. This initial support
soon dampened, as Croatia was forced to cede most of Dalmatia to Italy, and
northern Slovenia to Germany under the Treaty of Rome. While BosniaHerzegovina was joined to the NDH in compensation, many nationalists felt
betrayed by the reduction in their territory. As well, many Ustasha officers and
soldiers were poorly trained, and Pavelic’s distinct lack of charisma and inability
to hold mass rallies reduced his exposure among the population. Nevertheless, the
lack of credible resistance was also noticeable. Both Croatian Peasants Party and
the Catholic Church remained largely passive…In Serbia, the Nedic regime
enjoyed some support (MacDonald 134).
57
To ensure his victory over Yugoslavia, and debilitate people from further attempts
of uprisings against the German and Italian forces, “Hitler instructed Himmler to ‘put a
river of blood’ between the Serbian and Croatian people. The idea was not only to kill off
anyone found in Serbia proper, but to induce those remaining and the Croatians to hate
and fear one another, making impossible any kind of concerted action by them” (Adamic
36, italics added).
This “river of blood” is noticed through records and documentation that survived
World War II. The Croatian Peasant Party, Partisans and Chetniks fought their Axis
enemies, as an intruder into their politics and their homeland, and at the same time these
same factions distrusted each other. The distrust incapacitated them to join forces and
defend their country. In fact, their leading style and ideology were so contrasting that
while fighting Germany they fought each other in an attempt to gain power. The battle
between two fronts for political power and leadership in Yugoslavia prevented any
possible collective effort and caused confusion among the people within the borders of
Yugoslavia and also among the Allies. The civil conflict brought additional suffering,
atrocities and unnecessary deaths:
The wartime records of some groups of Serbs and Croats were dubious, which
allowed historians to cast doubt on the conduct of each nation during the Second
World War. Some had collaborated with the occupiers, some had committed
massacres of civilian populations…Nevertheless, there were clear qualitative
differences between the Allied-backed Chetnik monarchists and their small-scale
massacres, and the Nazi-backed Ustasha with their Croatian-run concentration
camps” (MacDonald 135).
58
In this whirlwind of confusion, Jews and Gypsies alike could hope for little. It
was almost impossible to know who was a friend and who a foe. The Gypsies’ great hope
for survival lay in their ability to adapt to yet another form of centuries-long persecution
and in the continuation of their nomadic life style by constantly fleeing the enemy. Those
who remained in the territory of NDH were lucky enough to have been rounded up by
Italian forces, which provided them with protection and saved their lives. Most, however,
were rounded up by Croatian forces and sent to concentration camps. The case of Serbia
was a bit more complicated than that, since the region was carved up by Hungary,
Germany and Bulgaria, with a puppet set up in Serbia proper, under the jurisdiction of the
Germans. Each of the occupied forces had different policies, and each conducted their
racial agendas in very different ways.
Life and death in Serbia:
Serbia ceased to exist as a republic in the Yugoslavian kingdom “through the
authorization of Premier Dusan Simovic, who without knowledge of the rest of the
government, signed a capitulation agreement with the German command in behalf of
Yugoslavia” (Adamic 33). Hitler set up a puppet regime to ensure his governing power in
Serbia proper and to prevent any further outbreaks of rebellion:
For his quisling in Serbia proper Hitler picked General Milan Nedic of the
Yugoslav Army. An extremely able man and also a tough hombre, a pro-Nazi
since 1937, when he became convinced that German power was destined to
dominate the world, Nedic had no rivals for this position (Adamic 33).
59
Figure 12: Picture taken during a meeting between Adolf Hitler and Milan Nedic, the president of
Serbian Puppet Regime, in 1943 (courtesy of Philip Cohen, preface).
Nedic’s regime, the Government of National Salvation, was a puppet regime with
very limited control. Soon after the establishment, the puppet regime had to apply the
racial policies of the Third Reich:
Soon after the start of the occupation, on May 31, the military commander
announced a regulation that imposed various restrictions on both Gypsies and
Jews. Some of these provisions, for example the dismissal of lawyers, doctors,
dentists and pharmacists as well as all public office holders, probably did not
affect many Gypsies; several other rules did. Gypsies had to wear a yellow
armband with the imprint “Gypsy”; members of both sexes between the ages
fourteen and sixty were made subject to compulsory labor; all Gypsies were
barred from theaters, cinemas, swimming pools, restaurants and public markets;
they were subject to a curfew between 8pm and 6am, and they were not to leave
60
their place of residence without permission of the district military command.
Anyone descended from at least three Gypsy grandparents was considered a
Gypsy; Zigeunermischlinge (those with one or two Gypsy grandparents or
married to a Gypsy) were to be treated like Gypsies (Lewy 129).
Figure 13: Map of Serbian territory in 1943, occupied by Germany, not including Vojvodina, which
was under Hungarian occupation. Prior to 1943 Bulgaria held parts of the lower Serbia (Kosovo) and
Macedonia (courtesy of National Archives).
These policies included frequent round ups and ghetto establishments, which slowly
slipped into deportations to concentration camps in Serbia territory:
Rump Serbia, which had a Gypsy population of no more than 40,000 in the spring
of 1941, was under the military control of the German army, aided by the puppet
Government of National Salvation. Serbian Roma suffered from similar, though
not as deadly, policies as their Croatian counterparts. The Gypsy quarter on the
outskirts of Belgrade in Zemun had been bombed, like the rest of the Serbian
capital, several days before Germans invaded the city in early April 1941.Once it
61
had fallen, Nazi authorities required the Roma to wear yellow armbands with
“Zigeuner” printed on them. On May 31, 1941, German military authorities
decreed, “Gypsies are to be treated as Jews.” Finally all Gypsies were to be put on
a special register. On October 23, 1941, authorities decided to open a
concentration camp for Jews and Gypsies on the fairgrounds at Zemun and
destroyed the Gypsy camp that lay at its edge for health reasons. Later,
“jurisdiction of Zemun camp passed to the Croat regime and the Ustasha guarded
the camp under German Security Police command.” Over the next year, about 10
percent of Belgrade’s Roma were sent to the Semlin camp, where they became
slave laborers, forced to dig graves for Jews killed in mobile gas vans and buried
in Avala south of Belgrade (Crowe 220).
Figure 14: A clean up after the bombing of Belgrade. All Jews and Gypsies were forced to work
(courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
Hitler hoped that the puppet regime could control the outbreak of further conflict,
suppress any guerilla activities, and regulate the ghettos and labor camps. Leaving a
handful of German troops to regulate the occupied territory, Hitler went back to his
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previous preparations to finalize the delayed attack on the Soviet Union. This action
backfired, as a new uprising spread across the region, bringing in question the authority
of the puppet regime’s leaders and the ability of the German units to control Serbian
people:
Many German units were withdrawn from Yugoslavia in preparation for the
attack on the Soviet Union, and this weakening of the German presence prompted
the Communist-led resistance movement to step up its activities. On July 12,
about three weeks after Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, the Serbian
resistance issued a call for a general uprising. The German occupation authorities
reacted with reprisal executions, and, as the partisan movement grew in strength
and aggressiveness, they began a policy of shooting an ever increasing number of
hostages, especially Communists, Jews and Gypsies (Lewy 128).
Figure 15: A street car in Belgrade, 1941, with a sign: Forbidden for Jews. According to a decree on
May 31, 1941 all Gypsies were to be treated just like Jews (courtesy of Memorial Jasenovac Museum).
63
Outraged at the resistance’s perseverance, Hitler enacted the mass executions and
all “Roma were…used as hostages as part of the Reich’s scheme to kill “Gypsies, Jews
and other hostages at a 1:100 ratio for every German soldier killed in Serbia” (Crowe
220). One witness account reports that German soldiers “took all Jews who had not
previously been removed from the community, and a band of Gypsies, which came a
night before to the community from somewhere, to the mass execution; Germans took all
the Gypsy boys and men between fifteen and fifty, and lined them up with the rest”
(Adamic 23). National Socialists lined up Gypsies with the rebels from the Partisans and
Communists, making it easier to explain their execution as a justified punishment for
disobedience. There was neither any proof nor evidence to convict Gypsies of
committing any crimes or participating in the uprising:
In the case of Serbia, no evidence was ever adduced that the Jews and Gypsies
shot had anything to do with the armed struggle against the German occupation
forces. Although some Jews and Gypsies undoubtedly did serve with the
Partisans, the mass executions inflicted upon these two groups of people were
clearly disproportionate. Jews and Gypsies were singled out on account of deepseated hostility and therefore subjected to collective punishment in flagrant
violation of the laws and customs of war. In the eyes of the German military
commanders it was considered axiomatic that Jews were Communists and
therefore Germany’s enemies; Gypsies were regarded as spies. They therefore had
no qualms about imposing draconian reprisal measures on Jews and Gypsies.
Lastly, it is highly doubtful that these mass shootings had a deterrent effect upon
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the population; they probably only increased the willingness of Serbs to join the
Partisans (Lewy 130, 131).
The truth was that these shootings of Jews and Gypsies were yet another method
of systematic annihilation. In an attempt to protect innocent Gypsies from the racial
policies, and save some within the community, the Serbian government stepped in “in
order to eliminate certain harshness” and changed the racial definition of a Gypsy to one
“emphasizing social standing. From then on, Gypsies who were Serbian citizens, who
could prove that they ‘had been sedentary since 1850, and had a respected occupation and
led a regular lifestyle’ were exempted from restrictions,” however, if “they could not
obtain this certification, they were made subjects to compulsory labor or were taken to
concentration camps” designed for Jews and Gypsies (Lewy 129). Two such camps were
established by the middle of September, and it soon became evident that the prisoners
from these camps would be used for the shootings. Thus, the truth was disguised under
premises of rebellion, security, and safety measures, and as an example to all who
attempted to defy German troops in the future. In a letter to a friend dated October 17,
1941, and in a memo dated October 26, 1941, Telford Taylor, a German officer,
approved of the shootings as a method of systematic annihilation:
In the last eight days I had 2,000 Jews and Gypsies shot in accordance with the
ratio 1:100 for bestially murdered German soldiers, and a further 2,200, likewise
mostly Jews, will be shot in the next days. This is not a pretty business. At any
rate, it has to be, if only to make clear what it means even to attack a German
soldier… The Jewish and Gypsy question solves itself most quickly in this
way…As a matter of principle it must be said that the Jews and Gypsies in
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general represent an element of insecurity and thus a danger to public order and
safety. It is the Jewish intellect that has brought on this war and that has to be
destroyed. Gypsies, on account of their inner and outer disposition, cannot be
useful members of the family of nations. It has been established that the Jewish
element plays an important part in the leadership of the bands and that Gypsies in
particular are responsible for special atrocities and intelligence. That is why it is a
matter of principle in each case to put all Jewish men and all male Gypsies at the
disposal of the troops as hostages (Lewy 131, italics added).
The shootings of Gypsies and Jews were often allowed in order to protect or save
the locals. As in the case of Rabbis in the Jewish ghetto communities, the decision had to
be made who would be sent to a certain death, and often the strange and different nonwhite people and non-Christians ended up being the scapegoats:
On October 26, 1941 Harald Turner, German officer in charge of the German
units in the region, issued order number 44/41, specifying that the subjects for
retaliations should be primarily Jews and Gypsies…Indeed, in his postwar
testimony, SS colonel Wilhelm Fuchs, chief of the Einsatzgruppe for Serbia prior
to January, 1942, stated: “I often gave Jews (or Gypsies) to be shot in order to
save Serbs” (Cohen 115).
These measures only helped promote German policies. In their hope to rid the region of
Gypsies, however, National Socialists miscalculated the numbers of Gypsies on the
territory of Serbia proper and falsely hoped to have made Serbia “Gypsy free and soon
also Jew free”:
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Though the Germans claimed by 1942 that Serbia was “Gypsy free,” they only
effectively controlled about one-third of Serbia’s Roma population. In reality,
they woefully overestimated the number of Gypsies and Jews in Serbia and
Belgrade. German officials initially calculated that there were 150,000 Gypsies in
Serbia in the spring of 1941; on the eve of opening the Semlin camp in early
December 1941, they expected “16000 Gypsies and Jews to be interned at the
new Judenlager (Jewish camp). Though records vary, it is estimated that only
6,280 Jews and Gypsies were in the camp by March 1942, with Jews making up
90 percent of the inmate population. Many Gypsies have already fled, hid,
evaded, or joined the resistance (Crowe 220, 221).
The hostage shootings continued, but soon after these executions began, Gypsies
understood that it was their lot to either go to their immediate death or to hide. Only few
sat around to await their immediate death and once again became nomads. Such was the
case of Slobodan Berberski, a writer and Roma activist, born 1919, who was captured
during the round up in Zrenjanin in 1941. He escaped from the prison’s hospital with a
group of prisoners, hid in forests until he met up with the First Partisan Regiment, which
he joined, and fought with until the liberation of Yugoslavia (Ackovic 13, my
translation). The Gypsies hiding in Serbia soon proved to not be as easy a prey as the
Gypsies in Germany had been, especially since the Partisan ranks under the leadership of
Josip Broz Tito welcomed anyone willing to fight and defend their country. Josip Broz, a
Croat himself, escaped persecution in royalist Yugoslavia in the early 1930s due to his
Communist ideology and activities. In his aspiration to bring equality and camaraderie,
he was disappointed at the Communist regime he witnessed in Russia and returned to
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Yugoslavia at the outbreak of World War II in hopes of fighting with his people against
oppression. After Germany invaded Yugoslavia, he began building up forces in the
mountains of lower Serbia. Tito, a nickname he gained for his great leadership and
delegation abilities (Ti –to: you-do that), welcomed everyone into the Partisan ranks, not
regarding social status, ethnicity, gender, or upbringing. Only one rule applied. All had to
treat each other as brothers and sisters. Because of their political aspirations to establish
equality among the ethnicities and religions in Yugoslavia, Partisans fought not only
Germany and its allies; they were also faced with the enemy within, the Chetniks:
The most prominent Chetnik leader was Dragoljub (Draza) Mihajlovic, a
Yugoslav Royal Army colonel…Appointed minister of the army, navy, and air
force by the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London in January, 1942,
Mihajlovic was a devoted royalist, whose relationship to the Axis powers evolved
into a pattern of complexity and compromise…By late 1941, Mihajlovic’s
Chetniks effectively had abandoned resistance to the Axis in favor of the struggle
against Tito’s Partisans, and thereafter maintained a pattern of collaboration with
both Germans and Italians against Partisans, notwithstanding sporadic acts of
anti-Axis sabotage. Indeed, during late 1943 and 1944, and especially after Allied
support had shifted to Tito, the Chetniks made a point to openly fight the Axis in
the presence of American and British military observers (Cohen 40).
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Figure 16: Wanted dead or alive: Reward of 100.000 Reich marks in gold for the person who turns in
Communist leader Tito alive or dead. Josip Broz Tito, leader of Partisan resistance forces and of the
Communist Proletariat, Croat by birth, posed a great threat to German military forces in
Yugoslavia. He continually disturbed their plans, taking in any escapees, and infiltrating the German
posts (courtesy of Photogallery titoville.com).
Draza Mihajlovic was more concerned with the protection of the royal family
status in Yugoslavia than with the enemy from the outside. The guard units that were
regarded as prestigious, elite, and noble military units during World War I became a
threat to the return of peace during World War II. Because of their prestigious reputation,
Chetniks fooled allied forces into sending them aid and supplies. But, even though
Chetniks pledged to side with the Allies, the ultimate goal of defying Communists and
preserving the monarchy was more important. In their personal war against Communism,
Chetniks often shifted sides, helping the Axis powers when it fit their pursuits. This inner
turmoil aided Germans in their fight against Partisans. Allied forces supplied Chetniks
until 1943 and thus hindered Partisans in their advances against Germany. The Partisan
ranks, however, grew each day, with many refugees joining the groups. Among these
were Gypsies fleeing the enemy. Gypsies ended up being valuable recruits, especially as
message carriers:
69
…We went to Bulgaria. Same thing happened. Then we slowly ran out of money.
It had gotten tight. So we went back to Yugoslavia again because it happened the
same thing in Romania, in Bulgaria. So we went to Yugoslavia and there it really
got bad. We ran out of money. I had no more shoes to wear; I was barefooted. We
couldn’t stay in the cities, so we stayed on farms. We slept in barns and we had to
live on what we found. People gave us food; we found corn that was in the field,
and berries. That’s how we survived…They picked me to bring the message there
because I could speak Yugoslavian. And I blended in with Yugoslavian kids. And
they said to walk on railroad tracks so I don’t get lost. Go to the next village and
somebody will wait for me there. They said when you get there and you see a
light, then you stop there and somebody will come and pick them up and you tell
them…and they told me what to tell them (Sonneman 97, 98).
This woman was one of many Gypsy youth sent on dangerous assignments as
couriers. When they got caught, Gypsies faced certain death by immediate execution, or
were sent to one of the concentration camps in Serbia. She recounts her stay in the
concentration camp designed for Gypsies:
There was no Sunday, there was no winter day. In the wintertime, they give you
thin clothing, just for the meanness of it. They give you wooden clogs, if they fit
or if they didn’t fit. You just followed orders. You didn’t say you were too weak.
You got beaten, you got hurt, you got taken away. You just don’t say, “I don’t
feel good, I’m tired, I don’t want to, I’m homesick, I’m still a child.” You just
followed orders. You made no waves (Sonneman 101).
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The nomadic life style, the constant need to continue moving, and the ability to
adapt, however, proved to be an advantage to the Gypsies collaborating with Partisans,
and very few ended up being caught. This was the case with my family. My great aunt,
Katarina Grebenar, remembers as a young girl of the constant movement before troops,
of days filled with hunger, frost and light clothes, of hiding in bushes and forests, and of
Partisans who fed them:
My mom would wake us up in the middle of the night, and tell us we needed to be
quiet and get ready. We knew that meant we needed to pack light, and to take a
piece of bread or anything available, because it also meant we did not know when
and if we were coming back to this place ever again. We would escape through
back doors, climb out of windows, and slip into the darkness of night, into the
fields of corn and sunflowers, until we could reach a thick growth of woods.
Often we would see torch lights in the places we escaped and a big fire rising
from the houses, caravans, and tents…They burnt my village down…We spent
nights in the woods, hiding and avoiding main roads, continually moving to a new
place in hopes of being safer there. Sometimes people would feed us, and
frequently if we bumped into Partisans in the forests, they would take us in. But
my mom continued to move, never stopping, always calculating that we would be
safer if we were one step faster than the Germans or their friends (Personal
testimony, my translation).
While life for Gypsies under German occupation became a constant flight, life for
Gypsies who lived in Vojvodina, under Hungarian occupation, was much easier. Many
received protective status under Hungarian law, were numbered among Hungarian
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citizens, and were recruited to fight under the Hungarian flag. My uncle recounts the
story of his father, Josip Grebenar:
My father was a Hungarian Rom, and as such got enlisted in the Hungarian army
in 1941. He fought on the Hungarian side, until Partisans captured him during the
battle at Batina. Partisans were going to shoot him because they could not afford
prisoners on their long marches, however, before they decided whether to have
the execution, their units were attacked. In order to confuse the enemy, Partisans
put all the Hungarian soldiers in the front lines, and commanded them to fight.
My father fought and survived. Once he claimed his true identity as a Gypsy,
Partisans allowed him to stay. I assume he fought with them till the end of the
war, and from then on, always declared himself as a Gypsy (Personal testimony,
my translation).
Though some Gypsies joined Hungarian ranks, they sought the first possible
opportunity to escape, as is evident in the testimony of Mihajlo Buligovic Mladji, named
after his father, who spoke about his father’s fate:
My father got recruited with the Hungarian army, just like many Roma living in
Vojvodina. My father did not want to fight with the Axis powers, and as soon as
an opportunity presented itself, he escaped. Not knowing whether to join Chetniks
or Partisans, he remained in hiding until the end of the war. He feared being
prosecuted as a Hungarian by the Communists, so he openly began declaring
himself as a Gypsy. He was granted a pardon and remained living in Vojvodina.
He never spoke of the years in hiding, only that he kept close to woods and
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forests. He spoke very little of the war or the persecution of Gypsies during the
war (Personal testimony, my translation).
As greater numbers of Gypsies began joining the resistance, the Partisan
leadership realized they needed to provide greater protection to minorities in their ranks.
This decision was put in writing at the Second Meeting of the Anti-Fascist Committee of
the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia, which met on 29 November 1943 in Jajce. At this
meeting, several important points came out, such as equality among the republics of
Yugoslavia, with a guarantee for a future of unity. In that unity, all these regions were
called upon to forget their hatred and guarantee all minorities and all ethnicities national
rights. In this provision, the Communists were calling all people on the territory of
Yugoslavia to make a step toward recognition of Jews, Gypsies, and other minorities and
to treat them accordingly.
Figure 17: Decision of the Second Meeting of Anti-Fascist Committee for People’s Liberation of
Yugoslavia. Point 4 guaranteed all national minorities (among which Jews and Gypsies found their
voice as well) all national and sovereign rights and privileges (courtesy of Yugoslavian National
Archives, arhiv.sv.gov.yu ).
73
As the war progressed documents in Serbia got destroyed. Thus “much of the
evidence related to Serbian concentration camps” and the puppet regime “was destroyed
under the orders of the retreating Nazis,” however, some of “the memoirs of survivors of
the Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade” survived (Cohen 48). From these documents
and memoirs it is not possible to establish a clear picture of what happened, but it
remains certain that the puppet regime, voluntarily or forced, did collaborate with
Germany and thus was accordingly prosecuted. Minorities in Serbia were given the rights
they were promised, with an infinite remorse for the hardships caused them during the
years of occupation. As a new Communist leader and president of the country,
reaffirming his commitment toward all minorities, “Marshall Tito cultivated socialist
fraternity and a unity that took precedence over ethnic differences”
(cidc.library.cornell.edu 2004).
Figure 18: Tito visits the ruins of the bridge across the river Sava which connected Serbian soil with
the Croatian terrain, in May 1945 (courtesy of the Photogallery titoville.com).
74
Life and death in Croatia:
Hitler allowed “Mussolini to make inland Croatia an independent free state under
quisling Ante Pavelic, who also, as in case of Milan Nedic, had no competition for the
job” (Adamic 33). The new state included the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
and parts of Serbia. Pavelic, according to the descriptions of some historians, was a
gruesome character, who hid in Italy ever since 1934 due to his fascist involvement and
criminal record, and there awaited his return to Croatia as a leader of the Croatian
fascists. He was still in Italy when the Independent State of Croatia was created;
however, “Germany demanded that a government be named immediately, and that the
Ustasha carry out the disarming of the Yugoslav army according to the instructions they
had already received in the respective locations” (Dedijer 83).
Figure 19: Swastika in Zagreb, announcing new government under the leadership of Ante Pavelic,
and under direction of Nazi Germany (courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
All those who were seeking Croatian Independence embraced this new found
‘free’ state, joining the Ustasha ranks. The Ustasha military ranks took pride in following
the example of their fascist friends in Italy, as well as the discipline of their allies in
75
Germany. Pavelic’s Ustasha were to Croatia what Hitler’s SS troops were to Germany.
Known for their brutality and lawlessness, Croatian peasantry feared the Ustasha:
After the short-lived war in April of 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was
divided among the aggressor countries: Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Horti's
Hungary and Boris III's Bulgaria. In the meantime, while the war was still being
fought, the founding of the Ustasha's Independent State of Croatia (abbreviated as
NDH from the Serbo-Croatian "Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska") was proclaimed on
April 10, 1941; territories besides those, which were traditionally settled by the
Croats, were grafted into this state, including all of Bosnia- Herzegovina and parts
of Serbia. There were more than two million Serbs living in the newly created
puppet state, who made up one third of the entire population of the NDH. There
were also significant numbers of Jews, Roma, and members of other national
groups. As soon as the NDH was proclaimed, the leader of this Italian-German
fabrication, the head of the Ustasha named Ante Pavelic, began to carry out the
Ustasha's program of the creation of a purely Croatian area for living and a " pure
Croat nation"…According to their ideologists, the condition for the creation of a
purely Croatian state would be the expulsion of the Serbs ("Greek- Easterners"),
the Jews ("Zidovi") and the Roma ("Gypsies"). Claiming that the Serbs were both
racially and religiously different from the Croats, they killed them, deported them
or forcibly converted them. The Jews and Roma were to be completely
annihilated as they were considered to be lower races. The Ustasha government
and its jurisdiction passed a series of laws, orders and regulations by which Nazifascist methods of terror and ethnic genocide were made legal (the Regulation on
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the Outlawing of the Cyrillic Alphabet, the Regulation on Racial Affiliation, the
Regulation on Citizenship, the Regulation on Conversion from One Religion to
Another, and so on). Yet, the most massive crime against the Serbs, Jews and
Roma was carried out outside the framework of those laws and legal documents.
The Ustasha acted on their racial, religious and national intolerance without
regard for any kind of laws or norms (Bulajic 1997).
Figure 20: Map of Independent State of Croatia territory in 1943, ally to Nazi Germany (courtesy of
National Archives and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
Pavelic’s Ustasha established a new regime, which by no means could have been
called a ‘free state.’ Obsessed with mirroring their allies, Pavelic’s regime followed the
rhetoric of its Axis sponsors and declared war on Communists and other “undesirable
elements.” Following a decree of April 22, 1941, the regime began to purge Serbs, Jews
and Gypsies from government service, the military, mass media, business, and other
professions (Cohen 91). Others followed this decree, which defined the rights of inferior
races:
77
Two decrees, “The protection of Aryan Blood and the Honor of Croatian People”
(No. XLV-67-2-p.1941), and “Belonging to the Same Race” (No. XLV-68-2p.1941), laid out “the rights of the ‘elite’ and the duties of the ‘inferior races,’”
and declared that anyone who had “two or more Gypsy grandparents” was a Rom.
The Ministry of the Interior’s Decree No. 13-542 ordered all Gypsies to register
with the police on July 22-23, 1941. The Croatian government seized Roma
property, while most of the republic’s Gypsies were arrested and sent to Ustasha
concentration camps. Over the next two years, some Croatian Roma were sent to
death camps in Germany and Serbia, while others were executed “in reprisal for
Partisan and Chetnik activities in the NDH.” Estimates are that 26,000 to 28,000
Rom died in the NDH during the Porrajmos (Crowe 220).
Figure 21: April 1941 proclamation of Independent State of Croatia, and a poster detailing the
attributes of an Aryan Croat, calling people to cleanse their lands of any undesirables. Translation
reads: Great leaders, Adolf Hitler and Dr. Ante Pavelic, call you to defend your homeland and join
the volunteer Croatian SS ranks (courtesy of Muzej Revolucije Narodnosti Jugoslavije and United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
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Even though the racial superiority appealed to the general public, Pavelic was
never able to gain greater support with the peasantry, and his Ustasha ruled by fear and
with the support of Nazi Germany in order to make the regime survive. General public
feared the Ustasha, which made it possible for thousands of innocent people to be
tortured, mobbed and killed before their eyes without any intervention:
The voluntary Ustasha militia and Pavelic’s Personal Guard, responsible for
nearly all World War II atrocities attributable to Croats, numbered 70,000 at their
peak in September 1944. Without the direct support of Adolf Hitler, however, the
Ustasha regime could not have stayed in power for even months (Cohen 100).
Figure 22: The official government of NDH (Independent State of Croatia), with Ante Pavelic as
president (hand raised). Ante Pavelic, head of the newly created Independent State of Croatia, takes
the oath of office in April 1941. (courtesy of Muzej Revolucije Narodnosti Jugoslavije and United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
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Figure 16: Croatian fascist leader Ante Pavelic makes his first state visit to Nazi Germany 16 June
1941. From left to right: Pavelic, Hitler, Hermann Goering (courtesy of JRI).
Figure 17: A youth organization of the Ustasha Movement was formed on 4 November 1941 by
decision of Ante Pavelic. The organization of Ustasha youth covered all youth from age 7 to 21 years
old, with separate divisions for male and female, and was divided into: 1. Ustasha mainstay (ustaška
uzdanica), which covered age 7 to 11 - in primary schools, 2. Ustasha heroes (ustaške junake) covered
age 11 to 15 - early gymnasium years, and 3. Ustasha Starchevitcheva youth (ustaška Starčevićeva
mladež) covered all students age 15 to 21. The organization was responsible for education in areas of:
a) Ustasha pre-military training, b) religious education, c) propaganda, d) physical education, e) art,
f) health, g) social-economic matters, and h) for housekeeping, which was specific training for female
youth only (www.vojska.net 2004) (picture courtesy of JRI).
Pavelic relied greatly on the help he and his regime received from the powerful
Axis ally Germany and adopted any policy he could to please the “hand that fed” his
regime. Soon after the racial policies and decrees were adopted, the building of
concentration camps began. In addition, Pavelic established the Ustasha youth, who were
trained just as Hitler’s youth were, to “embrace” the purity of the Croatian people and be
80
an effective member of that society. This way he ensured that the concentration camps
would be run by his native people, rather than by German troops:
According to the example of their protectors, Nazi Germany and the other fascist
regimes, concentration camps were founded in the NDH for the purpose of
‘purifying the nation’ of undesirables. The Ustasha called them ‘collection’ or
‘work’ camps, and they were designed for the mass internment and systematic
total destruction of Serbs, Jews, Roma, and ‘objectionable’ Croats. The so-called
‘Ustasha Secret Service’ (or rather its) ‘Department III’ that was also called the
‘Ustasha Guard’ was in charge of the founding, organization, and management of
the concentration camps in the NDH. Although they were actually the same,
‘Department III’ took care of the founding, organization, and management of the
camps, while the ‘Ustasha Guard’ was assigned to forming military units which
guarded the camps and carried out the task of transporting the Serb and Jewish
people from the surrounding territories to the camps, and they were also those
who killed the prisoners (Bulajic 1997).
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Figure 18: Location map of various concentration camps, prisons and waiting grounds distributed
through out the territory of Yugoslavia in the years 1941-1945: 1.Lepoglava, 2.Loborgrad, 3.Danica,
4.Kerestinec, 5.Jastrebarsko, 6.Sisak, 7.Bakar, 8.Loznica, 9.Kraljevica, 10.Kampor, 11.Jadovno,
12.Pag, 13.Molat, 14.Zlarin, 15.Kruscica, 16.Jasenovac, 17.Stara Gradiska, 18.Tenja, 19.Djakovo,
20.Crveni Krst, 21.Banjica, 22.Svilara, 23.Sabac, 24.Petrovaradin, 25.Sajmiste (courtesy of United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, numbers added).
Most of the victims were imprisoned at Jasenovac, the largest Ustasha
concentration camp in the territory of Yugoslavia, which operated from August 1941,
until April 1945 (Cohen 91). Jasenovac remains known as the most brutal concentration
camp in the territory of Yugoslavia. It was, however, not the only concentration camp
that existed in Yugoslavia. The table below provides limited information about the
location and the type of the other concentration camps throughout Yugoslavia from 1941
till 1945.
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Table 1: Information on concentration camps through out the territory of Yugoslavia, with
respective locations and description of who ran the camps, what type of camps they were, and
possible estimates of how many people died; numbers and the color variation added are inserted for
easier overview of the camp map above, shown under fig. 18. The text has been slightly edited to
conform to proper English usage (courtesy of vojska.net).
Camp ID
Location
Operated
by
Description
Backa
Palanka
Hungarians
?
7.Bakar
?
?
21. 'Banjica'
better known
as Jajinci
Belgrade
Germans
Started as a center for hostages, it was the only camp without
survivors. Numbers of victims range from 23,637 identified to
estimates of 30,000, 69,400 and 80,000.
20. Crveni
krst
(Red cross)
Niš
Germans
Large camp located in the Nish suburbs next to one of the
largest railway marshaling yards. Two estimates of victim
numbers are mentioned: 1910 and 2000.
3. 'Danica'
Koprivnica
Ustasha
First camp formed by Ustasha. Mostly Serbs, Jews and
substantial number of Croats arrived to the camp with the first
transport on April 29th. Some 3000 (or 5000) people went
through the camp, average number of prisoners was around
2500 at any given time. In June and July of 1942 Serbs and
Jews were sent to Jadovno, Croats were sent to Stara Gradiška
and Jasenovac. Camp was closed in autumn 1942.
19. Đakovo
Đakovo
Ustasha
Opened in December 1941, mainly for Jewish women and
children, of which around 3000 were in the camp. Large
number was executed. Closed in June 1942. The inmates were
taken to Jasenovac.
11.'Jadovno'
Gospić
Ustasha
Opened in June, first camp where mass executions of Serbs
and Jews have been carried out. Dead bodies where thrown
into deep ravines nearby. Large numbers of communists were
also executed in 'Jadovno'. Allegedly number of murdered is
around 35,000. Camp was closed in August 1941.
Jarak
Sremska
Mitrovica
Germans?
5.
Jastrebarsko
Jastrebarsko
Ustasha
Children’s camp - for children from Kozara and from Croatia.
1018 children died in the camp. On August 26th 1942,
Partisans liberated the camp and freed 700 children.
10. Kampor
Rab island
Italians
Formed in early 1942, closed with the capitulation of Italy in
September 1943. Interned larger number of Jews, Croats and
Slovenians. Some 13,000 prisoners passed through the camp.
According to the official Italian records 1267 persons died,
however, there are only 1079 marked graves. According to
statistical calculations the number of killed was 4641.
?
9. Kraljevica
?
?
4. Kerestinec
near Zagreb
Ustasha
First prisoner transport occurred on May 22nd. An escape
attempt on the night of July 13/14 failed, and 77 Communists
lost their lives. Only 14 managed to escape. Camp was closed
soon after that.
15. 'Kruščica'
Travnik
1. Lepoglava
Lepoglava
2. 'Loborgrad'
Zlatar Bistrice Ustasha
Operated during summer 1941. Camp established (mostly) for
Jewish women and children.
Ustasha
Prison established for officials and supporters of the ExYugoslav Kingdom. Around 1000 people died in it.
The camp operated from September 1941 to autumn 1942.
Together with Serbian women, the camp housed 1300 Jewish
women, who were sent from 'Krušičica', together with children
to this camp. After the closing of the camp, they were sent to
Oswiecim (Auschwitz).
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8. Loznica
Approximate number of victims at Loznica: 1,000
13. Molat
Island
Italians
23.Dulag 183
Šabac
?
Total number of murdered reached about 7,320.
12. Pag
Pag island
Ustasha
Operated during the summer months of 1941. Prisoners were
sent to this camp form Gospić transit camp. Mass executions
were frequently carried out in this camp. During closing of the
camp in August 1941, around 3000 Serbs were sent to
'Jadovno,' around 450 Jews where sent to Kruščica (women),
and to Jadovno and Jasenovac (men).
Paracin
Serbia
?
?
?
24.
Petrovaradin
?
?
18. 'Tenja'
Osijek
Ustasha
First transport occurred in June 1942. Used to gather all
arrested Jews who were left in Osijek and Slavonija region,
totaled some 3000 persons. Group of 1000 was sent to
Oswiecim (Auschwitz) on August 15th, the second group to
Jasenovac on August 18th and the last on August 22nd 1942
to Oswiecim (Auschwitz) over Lobograd.
25. 'Sajmište'
(Semlin)
Zemun on the Germans
Danube, in
front of
Belgrade
Estimated number of victims at Semlin: 40,000
6. Sisak
Sisak
Ustasha
Began operating in August 1942, part of Serbian population
from Kozara was sent to the camp after the offensive. Mostly
old men, women and children. Older prisoners were then
transported to Stara Gradiška and Jasenovac.
22. Svilara
Pancevo
Germans
?
14. Zlarin
?
?
I, II, III, IV
16.
Jasenovac
Ustasha
V
17. Stara
Gradiška
Ustasha
The main and the largest camp in
the Independent State of Croatia
started operating in the summer of
Some writings have been
1941. It expanded Camp No.1 in
published on these two
November by addition of Camp
camps. The number of
No.2, Camp No.3 and Camp No.4
victims in these
In documentations it is mention as publications range from
Camp. No.5 of Jasenovac camp
below 100,000 to above
complex. Prisoners were
one million.
transported from Jasenovac to
Stara Gradiska and then sent back
to Jasenovac for executions
At the end of the war, the records of the Ustasha acts and government were
destroyed to prevent Allies from obtaining any concrete evidence. The Independent State
of Croatia was absorbed back into the federation of states, and as part of Yugoslavia, it
was pardoned and never accounted for the atrocities committed. Due to lack of
84
information, lack of interest in accounting for Gypsy victims, and fear to admit fault, the
truth was readily forgotten under Tito’s rule, where all were adopted back into the state as
part of a social fraternity.
85
Chapter 3
Jasenovac: The end station
“The third largest concentration camp in World War II, the Jasenovac
concentration camp, is also the least known in the world, and for most of the people in
western countries unknown. A suppressed chapter of history indeed” (Djuric 2003).
The beginnings of death at Jasenovac:
Located on the junction between the rivers Sava and Una, the town of Jasenovac
lies on the train route between Zagreb and Belgrade. Even prior to the outbreak of the
war the region was well known for its factories on the outskirts of Jasenovac, and for its
predominantly Serbian population. Doctor Milan Bulajic, the director of the Museum of
Victims of Genocide in Belgrade, explained possible reasons for the particular choice of
the campsite in the Museum’s English Language Exhibition Catalogue (MEC):
The choice of the wider region of Jasenovac for such a monstrous camp was made
for several reasons. One of them was certainly the suitable geographic position.
The Zagreb-Belgrade railway was in the vicinity and was important for the
transport of the prisoners. The rivers Sava, Una and Velika Struga, in the middle
of the swampy Lonjsko Polje area, surrounded the terrain so that the escape from
the camp was almost impossible. On the other side of the Sava, the Gradina
region was hardly accessible, often flooded by the river, uninhabited, and far from
all witnesses. It was the ideal place to hide mass murders. The other possible
reason for the choice of this place were the existing factories in its vicinity; these
were workshops for the manufacture of chains, blacksmith shops, locksmith
86
shops, brick factories, lumber mills and so on. The camp was easily presented in
the public as a work camp (Bulajic 1997).
Djuric’s account describes the establishment of the complex:
The first inmates, consisting mostly of Serbs and Jews, were transported to the
village of Krapje, twelve kilometers west of Jasenovac, and ordered to construct a
camp which became officially known as “Jasenovac Camp No. I.” As the number
of prisoners continued to swell, second camp was founded between Jasenovac and
Krapje, which became officially known as “Camp No. II.” Inmates had to build
both of these camps alone and in great haste, constructing barracks and dikes that
were constantly overwhelmed by floods. The Ustasha finally realized that both
locations were unsuitable for camps, so they liquidated them and founded
alongside the “Brick Factory” in Jasenovac a new camp, which became officially
known as “Camp No. III.” In the town of Jasenovac itself, the Ustasha turned the
leather factory into “Camp No. IV.” The camp in Stara Gradiska, not far from
Jasenovac, was sometimes mentioned in the Ustasha reports as “Camp No. V.”
Together, these camps could receive up to 7,000 prisoners, but there were never
more than 3,000 to 4,000 men on labor detail, not even when Camp No. III
housed a variety of workshops (2003).
Once the terrain was evacuated, the unwanted local population was relocated
either to other areas or to the camp. With all the construction done, the site became a well
hidden machine of forced labor and death. As such, it fully operated until the end of April
1945 (Bulajic 1997).
87
Figure 23: Maps detailing the location of the Jasenovac camps (courtesy of Jasenovac Research
Institute and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Research Division).
Mihael Sabolevski describes in greater detail the camps in the Jasenovac
complex:
Before the foundation and gradual construction of the Jasenovac camps (starting
at the end of the summer 1941), smaller or larger groups of people [...] had
already been imprisoned in various transit centers and camps. However, the
Jasenovac system of concentration camps was the first systematically constructed
88
group of camps (in literature and original documents, including those of the
Independent State of Croatia, these camps were given different names, the most
frequent being: Jasenovac Transit Camp, Jasenovac Concentration Camp,
Jasenovac Transit and Labour Camp, Jaseonovac Labour Camp, etc). It was the
largest in area in the Independent State of Croatia both in the number of prisoners
who passed through it and also in the number of people who were killed there.
If we add that the camp worked continuously until the end of April 1945, for
almost four full years, we get a clearer picture of the human suffering that took
place in that terrible place.
For a short period of time in the summer of 1941 the Ustasha authorities
organized the camps Brocice and Krapje (numbered camps I and II), which were
disbanded at the beginning of November of that same year. The remaining
inmates were moved to the newly founded Jasenovac Camp in the Bačić
brickyard, numbered as Camp III in the Jasenovac camp system. Later other parts
of the system were founded, Camp IV (the tannery in Jasenovac) and Camp V
(Stara Gradiska). There were some temporary camps, as well, like the Gypsy
camp in Ustice, and the labour camp for women in Mlaka. The largest were
Camps III and V. Camp III, in the Bacic brickyard (see Fig.5), was encircled by
high barbed wire, and during 1942 and1943 by an additional wall, 3 meters high
and 3,360 meters long with many watchtowers. It consisted of 53 barracks, which
were mostly dwellings for the prisoners and various workshops. Camp V in Stara
Gradiška was similarly structured but was located inside the buildings and the
walls of a former penitentiary, and had 35 various structures.
89
Units of the Ustasha Defense insured the security in the camp itself. Strong
military Ustasha were concentrated in the camp, around it, and in the wider
Jasenovac area throughout the existence of the camps. It would have been very
difficult to liberate them although there were plans to do this in the People's
Liberation Army since the spring of 1942 (Sabolevski 102).
Figure 24: Two aerial photographs of the Jasenovac camp during the last days of World War II
(Yugoslav Cinemathek Nr. 3080/ Nr. 3083.) (courtesy of JRI).
The Jasenovac Research Institute (JRI), an institution organized by the survivors of
Jasenovac, shed additional light about the campsite. In this statement the survivors
estimate the number of people, who died in Jasnovac, stating:
Jasenovac was actually a complex of five major and three smaller "special" camps
spread out over 240 square kilometers (150 square miles) in south-central
Croatia. Along with hundreds of thousands of Serbs, some 25,000 Jews and at
least 30,000 Roma were murdered in these camps. The names of some 20,000
murdered children of all three nationalities, collected thus far by historians,
provide only a hint of the scale of the crimes committed against children.
90
Jasenovac is also known for having been one of the most barbaric death camps of
the Holocaust because of the extreme cruelty in which its victims were tortured
and murdered. Jasenovac was not the only death camp in fascist occupied
Yugoslavia, but it was by far the largest and the one in which a majority of the
some one million victims of racial genocide in World War II fascist Croatia were
exterminated” (2003).
Figure 25: Jasenovac campsite in winter 1942. At this point, the camp was fully operating as a death
camp (courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
The people of Croatia were aware of the existence of the camps. In fact, “the
Ustasha's newspapers announced to the public, on August 23, 1941, that the first barracks
for prisoners had been built near the villages of Brocice and Krapje, and that the camps
would be used for the draining of Lonjsko Po1je (a valley near Jasenovac)” (Bulajic
1997). At first, “ the prisoners actually worked on building the dike, but under
indescribably hard conditions and terror. Those who did not die from the exhausting work
and hunger, being immediately buried in the dike, were killed when the camp was
liquidated” (Bulajic 1997).
91
The Ustasha, however, attempted to present Jasenovac to the outside world only
as a work camp for outlaws:
The Ustasha's propaganda tried to present the concentration camps both to their
own people and to the world as places of useful work and reformation. The wider
area of the camp was strictly guarded. Only the confirmed Ustasha with specific
tasks were allowed in. Even the Germans, as allies and friends, were not allowed
to enter the camp freely. Under the pressure from abroad, especially from the
Germans, on February 6, 1942, an International Committee was allowed to visit
the camp Jasenovac, to see the way of living and working in it. In that delegation,
the Pope's emissary was also included, Monsignor G. Massuci.
Three days before that, Ljubo Milos, the commandant of the Jasenovac camps,
had summoned all the prisoners and ordered them to clean the camp, tidy the
dining room, kitchen, and hospital. The prisoners were given the sort of food that
they had never had, or would have when the visit was over. After the visit, the
photographs of “the workers at their machines” in well-equipped workshops, and
of the camp clinics with the staff in immaculately clean white uniforms were sent
to the world from Jasenovac. The camp was presented in such a way that it
seemed desirable to be in Jasenovac in that wartime of general uncertainty, death,
and poverty, without the slightest premonition of what was actually hidden behind
those photographs (Bulajic 1997).
92
Figure 26: Entrance door to the Camp III stated: working unit of the Ustasha defense, Complex of
Camps No.III (courtesy of JRI).
Figure 27: Jasenovac Camp No.III site, the Bacic brickyard (courtesy of War Museum Yugoslavia and
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
93
Figure 28: Ciglana, Camp III, the brick factory. The photograph was taken after an unsuccessful
attempt to blow up the tile factory, which the Ustasha used as crematoria (courtesy of Muzej
Revolucije Narodnosti Jugoslavije).
The brutality and massacres soon became too obvious, and some of the Croatian
population voiced complaints. The Ustasha, however, persuaded them to withdraw the
complaints in exchange for their personal and families’ safety. The atrocities continued
and when they reached their peek in early 1942, a delegation from Germany inspected the
campsites and admonished the Ustasha. “The conditions improved only for short periods
during visits by delegations, such as the press delegation that visited in February 1942
and a Red Cross delegation in June 1944” (Gutman 1995). During their visit, even the
Nazi generals were amazed at the horrors of Jasenovac:
General von Horstenau, Hitler's representative in Zagreb, wrote in his personal
diary for 1942 that the Ustasha camps in the NDH were “the epitome of horror,”
and Arthur Hefner, a German transport officer for work forces in the Reich, wrote
on November 11, 1942 of Jasenovac: “The concept of the Jasenovac camp should
actually be understood as several camps which are several kilometers apart,
94
grouped around Jasenovac. Regardless of the propaganda, this is one of the most
horrible of camps, which can only be compared to Dante's Inferno” (Bulajic
1997).
However, the improved conditions due to German admonition lasted only a very
short time and were of limited success. German officers held no authority over the
Ustasha, and the Ustasha were aware of their ultimate power over the prisoners in
Jasenovac. In his book, Vladimir Dedijer recounts a verbal exchange between a German
officer and an Ustasha, in which the Ustasha were admonished to stop the brutality, due
to continuing protests:
On the basis of the great protest against their crimes, the Ustasha decided in
December 1942 to interrupt the massacre for a while. They did this because the
Nazis were facing unexpected difficulties from the extent of partisan war. The
German schoolmasters were accusing the Ustasha of causing the rebellion by the
open liquidation and the poorly hidden blood thirsty, gruesome activities, which
were driving the people to defend themselves out of despair. They did not say this
out of humanitarian reasons, but out of fear of a rebellion in Yugoslavia, the
neighbor to the Third Reich. The German fascists had been convinced that they
could break any resistance in Yugoslavia with their terror. Since they had been
mistaken, they now placed the guilt for their failure on their lackeys.
A German officer intervened in Jasenovac. At the office of an Ustasha
administrator, he spoke for another, "more humane" treatment of the incarcerated
citizens and attacked the gruesomeness of the butchers. "What do you want? We
95
are doing everything that you told us and taught us to do!" replied the Ustasha and
thus shut him up (267).
The Ustasha claimed that all they did in Jasenovac was the result of commands
received from higher authorities. Even though Jasenovac has been named the
Yugoslavian Auschwitz, the historians have agreed that the brutality of Jasenovac
exceeded the death machine in Auschwitz, and that “with their sadism and pathological
crimes, the Ustasha even outdid their Nazi German masters” (Bulajic 1997). The
Jasenovac Research Institute expands this statement and claims that:
Its significance lies in the way in which the crimes have been concealed.
Historians have called Jasenovac "the dark secret of the Holocaust" and "the
suppressed chapter of Holocaust history." Public recognition of the tragedy that
occurred there has been suppressed either partially or completely by governments
and institutions for a variety of reasons (JRI 2003).
According to the forceful claims by the Institute members, approximately 300,000
to 700,000 people of various nationalities died in Jasenovac, however, the concentration
camp remained forgotten, maybe partially because it did not operate as a facility
primarily created to annihilate Jews, but rather Serbs and Gypsies (JRI 2003). Some
earlier estimates calculate a loss of approximately 500,000 to 600,000 people in the
Jasenovac camps. The varied data makes it impossible to know the precise number of
Jews, Serbs and Gypsies who died in the camp:
It is difficult to establish the number of victims killed in the Jasenovac
concentration camp, since many documents were destroyed. The prisoners' files
were destroyed twice (at the beginning of 1943 and in April 1945) and even if
96
they had been preserved, they would have been of little help discerning the truth,
because the Ustasha often killed the newly arrived prisoners immediately, without
putting their names into the files. This is particularly true of those who arrived
from Slavonia, Srem and Kozara, because it was only noted down that 9, 83, or
155 wagons had arrived. For instance, a very small number of Gypsies was filed,
only a few hundred, while it is known that all 25,000-35,000 of them from the
NDH were killed in Jasenovac. The Jewish community in Yugoslavia has
established the number of 20,000 Jews that were killed in Jasenovac (Bulajic
1997).
Another source adds to the puzzle of Gypsy losses, stating:
Statistics for Roma victims are difficult to assess, as there are no firm estimates of
their number in prewar Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The best estimates
calculate the number of Roma victims at about 26,000, of which between 8,000
and 15,000 perished in Jasenovac (Jewish Virtual Library 2004).
Finally, Djuric attempts to elaborate on the number enigma in his introduction:
However, in a number of Jasenovac reports, it is mentioned in several places,
quite specifically, that all Roma from the territory of the Independent State of
Croatia were gathered and killed in Jasenovac, numbering about 40,000 (which
includes the territory of modern Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Srem, and even
Backa and Banat, under Hungarian and German control) (4, italics added).
All these resources only add more confusion to the already difficult matter and make it
hard for the historians to give an accurate and exact number of Gypsies’ losses in the
concentration camp at Jasenovac.
97
The methods and tools of death at Jasenovac:
Transports form Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia arrived on a
regular basis. An account of witness Janka Nikolic, a Gypsy himself, depicts the rounding
up and collecting of Gypsies:
There were on a continuing basis about 120 Yugoslavian citizens of Gypsy
heritage in Miholjac. They were farmers, or in the agricultural sector of the
village. There were some workers, salesmen, and musicians among them. In May
1942, all these Gypsy families were told they were being relocated to another spot
where they could work the land and acquire permanent residency. The NDH
authorities reached this decision, which was a cause of avid discussion among
Gypsy population. The next day, the NDH authorities blocked off the area with
Gypsy houses, and the Gypsy families were told to pack their belongings, and to
take with them only the most necessary items. All Gypsies, both young and old,
left their homes and were summoned to the train station, where in the meantime
authorities had already summoned Gypsies from the entire D. Miholjac region...It
was a great number of people, but I could not estimate how many. They were
packed into animal cargo train wagons, which were then sealed, and the trains
drove off in the direction of Osijek…Later on we heard stories about their being
taken to camp Jasenovac. One of the Ustasha, or better said father of the Ustasha,
told me that all the Gypsies were taken to Jasenovac, where they were forced to
dig their own graves before they were brutally killed (Ackovic 9, 10, my
translation).
98
Trains from various regions in Croatia reached the camp according to a weekly
schedule. Many of the prisoners, especially in the case of Gypsies, however, reached the
camp on foot or were ordered to run. Witness Kustorin Marijan described this trip to
Jasenovac:
On 23 September 1944 I was relocated from Stara Gradiska camp to Jasenovac
with a group of 700 people. For nearly the whole trip, some thirty-eight
kilometers, we had to run. Anyone that stopped or staggered was killed on the
spot. The road followed alongside the Sava, so
many exhausted comrades
jumped into the river in desperation, to end the suffering (Djuric 16).
Family groups often dragged all their belongings to the camp, such as clothes, jewelry,
and caravans with chairs, blankets, bedding, and tents in hope that they were only being
falsely charged, since the prisoners were sent to the camp due to a “sentence” issued by
the Ustasha Police:
For an inmate to be sent to Jasenovac meant submitting to the mercy and cruelty
of his Ustasha tormentors; it meant martyrdom. The dark history of the Jasenovac
camp reveals that the Ustasha sent all elements that were to be liquidated there;
those who were deemed disloyal to the régime “for racial, religious, national or
political reasons.” Today, we can determine that the Ustasha sorted prisoners into
two categories. The first category comprised all inmates who were sentenced to
detention for duration of less than three years. It was the intention of the Ustasha
to exhaust these prisoners by labor to their physical limits, and then remove them
to make room for new prisoners (see Fig.13). Only a few prisoners were released
after they endured their sentence, and many of them later died from the
99
consequences of their experiences in the camp. The second category comprised
inmates who were sentenced to detention for the maximum duration of three
years. Prisoners sentenced by the Ustasha Police Service for duration of three
years were, as a rule, liquidated immediately upon their arrival. Both categories
have in common the fact that the prisoners were sent to the camp on basis of
individual “sentences” handed down by the Ustasha Police Service (Djuric 10).
At the entrance to the camp, the prisoners had to leave all of their belongings. If they
were allowed to proceed through the gate and enter the camp, and had a good blanket,
that blanket was exchanged for an old one. Bulajic comments in his Museum Catalogue
English Language summary:
The system of mass murder in Jasenovac was already in place in the fall of 1941,
as soon as the larger transports of people began to arrive. Men, women, and
children arrived to the camp by rail, truck, horse-drawn cart, or simply running at
the insistence of the Ustasha, equipped with rifles. Places of mass execution were
found all over the Jasenovac camp. Most of them were located on the right bank
of the Sava from the Dubicki limepits downriver, and especially in the village
Gradina (Bulajic 1997).
From this and the previous account it follows that most people, once stripped of
their belongings, were immediately executed. Only few survived the entry gate:
On their arrival most were killed at execution sites near the camp: Granik,
Gradina, and other places. Those kept alive were mostly skilled at needed
professions and trades (doctors, pharmacists, electricians, shoemakers,
goldsmiths, and so on) and were employed in services and workshops at
100
Jasenovac. The living conditions in the camp were extremely severe: a meager
diet, deplorable accommodations, a particularly cruel regime, and unbelievably
cruel behavior by the Ustasha guards (Gutman 1995).
Figure 29: Gypsies in the winter of 1942. Gypsies reached the camp on foot or with their wagons
(courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
101
Prisoners were humiliated and tortured in all concentration camps. In Jasenovac,
however, the Ustasha cared for little and killed their victims with much amusement:
Unlike the German camps where industrialized genocide was conducted, in
Jasenovac that genocide was done in a way never recorded in the history of the
human race. All which was negative, pathological and criminal, which
characterized the Ustasha movement as a whole, reached its peak in Jasenovac
(JRI 2003).
Figure 30: Gypsy wagons enter the gate to the Camp Site III (courtesy of United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum).
102
Figure 31: The Ustasha search through the belongings of the prisoners at the gate of Camp III
(courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
Besides meager meals and cruel work circumstances, prisoners were subjected to
immense emotional, physical, and psychological torture and humiliation:
The prisoners and all those who ended up in Jasenovac had their throats cut by the
Ustasha with specially designed knives (see Fig.9), or they were killed with axes,
mallets and hammers; they were also shot, or they were hung from trees or light
103
poles. Some were burned alive in hot furnaces, boiled in cauldrons, or drowned in
the River Sava. Here the most varied forms of torture were used; finger and toe
nails were pulled out with metal instruments, eyes were dug out with specially
constructed hooks (see Fig.14), people were blinded by having needles stuck in
their eyes, flesh was cut and then salted. People were also flayed, had their noses,
ears and tongues cut off with wire cutters, and had awls stuck in their hearts.
Daughters were raped in front of their mothers; sons were tortured in front of their
fathers. Said plainly, in the concentration camps at Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska,
the Ustasha surpassed all that even the sickest mind could imagine and do in
terms of the brutal way people were murdered. People in Jasenovac were no
longer human beings, but rather objects, which were available for the every whim
of the Ustasha (Bulajic 1997).
Figure 32: The usual tools of killing; next to it a picture of a knife-glove, specially devised by the
Ustasha to help in the process of killing and to ease the burden of having to hold the knife during the
mass executions (courtesy of JRI and Muzej Revolucije Narodnosti Jugoslavije).
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Once they entered the camp, prisoners’ human rights and dignity disappeared.
They were under the jurisdiction of the guards, who in turn could deal and dispose of
them at any time and in any circumstance they pleased. An Ustasha could kill any
prisoner and not be held accountable, or required to report and register the action taken:
The following episode is based on the testimony of witness Danon Jakob. On 23
December 1941, Milos Ljubo, one of the worst Ustasha murderers, ordered that
all prisoners assemble for muster. He pointed out that one of the inmates tried to
kill an Ustasha guard. He did not mention the name of the prisoner, nor of the
Ustasha the prisoner tried to kill. Milos Ljubo then separated twenty-five
prisoners from the line, grabbed a rifle and shot them all. Then he called for Dr.
Gusti Leindorfer to make sure they were all dead, after which he called for the
undertakers to take away their corpses. Then he added, joking, “Oh, I forgot to
ask for their names” (Djuric 22).
Besides "usual methods," which were used in other concentration camps through
out Europe, such as revolvers, machine guns, knives, gas chambers, hanging, freezing,
and starvation, Jasenovac was infamous for its burning methods, as well as for
experimental torture with axes, wooden hammers, bombs, hatches, iron bars, hammers,
and hoes. I remember my grandmother telling of people lined up next to the river Sava,
and being forced to kneel and beg before the Ustasha, who bet they could kill up to ten
with one stroke of an axe, or of a wooden hammer. The bodies would be pushed into the
river (see Fig.15) and would float all the way to Belgrade. The river was colored red, and
the stench of the bodies was so strong that it smelled for kilometers. These were,
however, fast and “boring” ways of execution. The “interesting” executions provided the
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Ustasha with entertainment. One of the few main “entertainment” activities consisted of
"surprise deaths.” Dedijer recounts one of the many stories:
We saw how they liquidated at the door of this walkway. When the victim exited
at the other side, he or she looked around uncertainly and suddenly stopped
directly before the closed door. The victim suspected something. Was it the smell
of blood and splattered brains that instinctively led him to suspect the deadly blow
in the next moment? Almost every victim stopped before the door that led into
oblivion and over which the mechanical hammer was hanging that would smash
his head. Then the guard pushed the prisoner and screamed: "Why are you
stopping? Go on! Forward! Into the camp!"
The door was thrust open and the victim made an indecisive step forward.
Immediately behind him, the Ustashe closed the door quickly. Then the Ustashe
in the hallway broke out in laughter. "Into the camp! Hee hee hee, ha ha! He's
already there! Ha ha ha! He's gone to the devil!" they laughed and didn't get
serious again until they heard the steps of the next victim.
“Faster, man. We don't have time for your elegant promenade. You're waddling.”
Later the guard told us about it quite openly. Behind the door, an Ustasha was
hiding with a hammer in his hand. The victim unsteadily took two or three steps
forward and then the Ustasha henchman dealt him a blow to the head.
Some prisoners watched these events. I looked around to the co-witnesses of these
terrible murders of the people from Zagreb. The camp prisoners who dared risk
their lives to see this horrifying scene were shaken by a convulsive laughter. They
had to laugh about the death grimaces so much that tears came to their eyes. There
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is nothing astonishing about the reaction of these witnesses. Because of the
constant stimulation, the torments, and tortures of the prisoners, the old prison
inmates watching this gruesome scene were totally stunned. Every prisoner
became numb because he knew that surely the same was awaiting him, and often
he even wished for a quick death (236).
Another form of entertainment was rape. Accounts of eyewitnesses and survivors,
as well as the accounts from my grandmother, speak of extreme pain and humiliation
inflicted upon women who were made to have intercourse with dogs, as well as act out
pleasure while being raped with machineguns and bayonets, to dance naked in front male
prisoners before they were taken on by 10 to 20 guards one after another or to eat their
own or their children’s flesh after their wombs were cut open (see Fig.12).
Figure 33: Gypsy woman with her children as they enter the camp. Women were main targets of
sexual abuse in the camp. Gypsy children (picture taken sometime at the end of 1942) were used to
liven the mood through their song and dance prior to their execution (courtesy of United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum).
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Figure 11: Women’s barracks. The seperation of men and women was conducted for one reason
only: easier access to rape victims (courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
Figure 12: Women who were raped, or whose flesh was cut or used to extinguish cigarettes, after
having satisfied the beastal preferences of guards were mutilated and killed (courtesy of JRI and
Professor Edmond Paris 311).
Few girls escaped the bleak fate. One of these girls was Kristina Jevtic, my
grandmother. During a round up in Zagreb in October 1941, she was mistaken for a boy
and placed in the men’s prisoner camp at age 14. Prisoners, though they knew she was a
female, kept the secret and continued to protect her from the Ustasha. Until she escaped
at the end of January 1942 with a group of Partisans, she witnessed some of the atrocities
committed on young and old, male and female. My father retold some of her experiences:
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During the winter, she was able to hide the fact that she was female, because she
would bandage her breasts and wear layers of clothes and material to keep
“warm.” She and the men were taken twice outside the camp to work in the fields.
The Ustasha guards would beat them without reason and shout at them the whole
time. Some of the blows were deadly, and then prisoners would have to drag the
bodies back to the camp. Being of small build, she was able to hide in the mass of
tall prisoners and escape some of the blows. She often witnessed groups leaving
for water and never returning from the river. First to go were Jews, then rich
Serbs and Gypsies. Later on, as new prisoners arrived, she heard them speak of
dead bodies floating down the Sava river for days. Because she was with men she
only heard groans and shouts from the women’s camp. Everyone knew the daily
routine of brutal rape in the women’s section of the camp. She avoided being
anywhere near it, for fear of being found and put with them. One day though, she
witnessed a young pregnant woman being cut open with hooks by a few guards.
Her unborn child was ripped out of her womb and butchered to pieces by
bayonets. The woman remained half open on the table for days, left to die slowly.
The Ustasha used her womb as an ashtray and played cards as they watched her
die in immense pain.
Figure 13: Prisoners working in the field. The production of goods continued under harsh
circumstances, such as heat, floods, starvation, exhaustion, freezing temperature, lack of clothes and
shoes (courtesy of Muzej Revolucije Narodnosti Jugoslavije).
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Figure 14: Victims’ eyes were dug out with specially designed hooks. The prisoners were often
subject to injection of various chemicals as part of experimental process (courtesy of JRI).
She spoke of gruesome tortures. Nails were hammered into toes and fingernails.
People were left naked in the freezing cold all night long with barbwire all over
their bodies, or hooked on the barbed fence and crucified. The prisoners could
hear the piercing cries produced by pain and freezing cold all day and all night
long. When they were fed, they were fed soup with a potato peel or two, and a
slice of bread here and there that was so thin one could see through it. She said the
Ustasha called this thin slice of bread “Pavelic portion.” One day she watched as a
group of the Ustasha held a tournament. They collected as many children as
would fit in a little house, piled them in there, and then shot and counted how
many they killed with one bullet (see Fig.18). These experiments and others, like
cutting ears, poking out people’s eyes, and making them crush their own eyeballs,
were some of their favorite activities. When night came, she tried to close her ears
not to hear the pain stricken shouts from the other side of the camp, the women’s
section. When, at the end of January 1942, she overheard Partisans plan an
escape, she demanded of the leader to be taken along. She knew once spring
came, she would not be able to hide the fact she was a female for long. The
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Partisans knew it too and decided to chance it and take her along. She remained
with the Partisans and fought till the end of the war. The years of Jasenovac,
however, left an imprint on her mind, which followed her for the rest of her life. I
remember her screaming at nights in her sleep. She was restless after that for
days. She spoke of the war and the camp very seldom, but when she did her whole
posture and look would change, and she looked pale, exhausted and worn. She
never stopped suffering from the months spent in Jasenovac (Personal testimony,
my translation).
Figure 15: Bodies thrown into the river would float sometimes all the way to Belgrade (courtesy of
JRI).
Dedijer’s account stands as another powerful witness of the horrible treatment of
prisoners through forced labor, meager meals and terrible living conditions:
The lunch meal in Jasenovac consisted of a completely watery, salty soup with
some potato peels. In the evening there was turnip soup, sometimes with five or
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six beans. The bread was to amount to 65 grams per day. On three to four days in
the week, no bread at all was distributed. Accordingly, the calories in the food did
not amount to more than 500 per day, which is a deficit of 2000 to 2500 calories
for every prisoner. You can imagine how quickly the prisoners in the
concentration camp at Jasenovac lost weight, for the work was precisely
calculated and organized. On the basis of physical exertion, many suffered from
acute heart disease and died of paralysis of the heart muscle. Collapsing from
heart disease was common. It happened most frequently in the tile factory. About
five to eight people died every day of acute heart failure (265).
All these ways to torture the frozen, starved, and exhausted crowd were for mere
entertainment of bored guards. When these forms would not satisfy the guards, and a
person caused a rage in the Ustasha, for one reason or another, they would often
incorporate the few methods to produce a “whole body treatment”:
The well known industrialist and philantrophropist Milos Teslic (see Fig. , 16) 26
years old, from Sisak, was cruelly tortured and murdered by the Ustasha. His legs
were broken, ears cut off, eyes gouged out, chest stabbed and finally the heart was
extracted through a big hole made in his chest. According to the witnesses
testimonies the Ustasha present claimed that the heart of the tortured Milos was
still beating on the palm of an Ustasha after it was taken out (Paris 311).
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Figure 16: The body of Milos Teslic, after a “treatment” by guards. The photograph was taken by an
Ustasha and found in his pocket at a later date (courtesy of Edmond Paris 311).
Even though the Ustasha did not distinguish between different prisoners, and
everyone in the camp expected to die in similarly brutal manners soon after their arrival
in the camp, they seemed to have had a special preference for Gypsies. Men were used to
dig graves or act as henchmen before they were killed or starved to death. In his journal,
Franciscan Miroslav Majstorovic Filipovic, one of the commanders in the camp wrote,
“the Gypsies, who came to the camp in large numbers at this time, raised our spirits with
monkeys and bears, songs and music” (Dedijer 278). Gypsies got chosen as gravediggers
and henchmen, maybe because of their stereotyped reputation as criminals, and evildoers:
After 1942 the Ustasha also used Gypsies. Prisoners would first have to dig long
and deep pits. The Ustasha would strip them naked, kick the gold fillings out of
their heads, and then the victim would have to jump into a pit, where an Ustasha
or a Gypsy would wait and hit the victim on the head with a sledgehammer or cut
the victim’s throat with a knife (Djuric 25, italics added).
Another account, by a witness Milos Petrovic, sheds additional light to these
brutal practices:
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After the liberation I talked to some Gypsies from Jankovac, region of Vinkovci,
Nikola and Toskan Petrovic, or maybe Radosavljevic. They both were able to
escape from the Jasenovac concentration camp. Both told me that Gypsies were
sent en masse to the concentration camp and that they were liquidated each night
by hundreds, either with sledge hammers or axes…Before the Gypsies were taken
to the execution site at the bank of the river Sava, they had to leave their bags and
clothes. Once in their underwear, they were executed, and some, as one of them
told me, dug mass graves in which the corpses would be thrown. Many times
people were still alive when they were thrown into the pit (Ackovic 21, 22, my
translation).
These two men survived to tell the story. The fate of most Gypsies, however, was to be
mercilessly killed, and buried in a pit they dug with their own hands. The first big
liquidation of all Gypsies in the camp took place in 1942:
From March 1942 until the end of the year, Camp No. III was constantly full of
men, women, and children brought there by the Ustasha in large groups to be
liquidated. To begin with, the Ustasha gathered all Gypsy men and women from
across the so-called Independent State of Croatia, numbering about 40,000
people, and transported them to Jasenovac.
All Gypsies were gathered in the field located between the “old wire” and the
great wall in the northeastern part of the camp. The area was enclosed by special
wire and guarded by several sentries. The Ustasha named it “Camp No.III-C,” (C
for Cigan or Gypsy) because at first only Gypsies lived there, in their tents or out
in the open, hungry and barefoot, in the heat of the sun and without shelter during
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storms. Their food was even worse than that received by the other inmates and the
Ustasha beat and whipped them with particular delight, and forced them to beat
and kill one another. At night they took them in groups to Gradina, forced them to
dig their own graves, and then finished them off with sledgehammers or hammers.
Thus the Ustasha liquidated within a few months every Gypsy man and woman,
young and old alike. Only a few Gypsies saved themselves, primarily those who
stood out by diligent work building the dike and the wall around the camp. The
Ustasha spared them, and took them to the villages of Gradina and Ustice, where
they assigned them work as undertakers and executioners. This group of Gypsies
survived for a long time. They lived in village houses, received good food, and
drank to excess. It is significant that none of them tried to flee. Their duty was to
dig graves in Gradina for the victims who now arrived in Jasenovac for the sole
purpose of being liquidated, to execute victims with sledgehammers or hammers,
and to bury them afterward. Although they fulfilled their duty as slaves, in the end
they, too, learned how little the Ustasha’s promises were worth. In early 1945, the
Ustasha killed them all, in order to eliminate all witnesses to their crimes (Djuric
43, 44).
Dedijer comments on the pit and hole digging, concluding:
Prisoners, usually Gypsies, who were later killed, dug them. Without knowing for
whom they were intended, they were digging their own graves, so to speak.
Prisoners, who escaped the Ustasha knives in Gradina saw Gypsies who were
themselves killing with hatchets. I also heard from prisoners in the camps that
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these Gypsies, forced by the Ustasha to help them in the mass murder, chopped
off heads of other prisoners (234).
The accounts already mentioned all depict the brutality of the camp, as well as its
similarity to the Nazi camps established throughout occupied Europe. They also testify
that Gypsies were treated with no respect, and that their lives were, just as was the case of
Jews, worth nothing. Their race was selected for complete extermination. The following
account, taken from the minutes at the trial of Artukovic, in the courts in Vinkovci,
Kotor, 10 March 1952, tells of the fate of those Gypsies who found themselves in this
whirlpool, and who experienced this racial annihilation. This was the hearing of Milan
Radosavljevic senior, son of Tanasi, from New Jankovac, born in New Jankovac, 43
years old, illiterate. The testimony was recorded at the trial of Dr. Andrija Artukovic,
who was charged with criminal action according to the articles 124, 125, and 128 of the
KZ:
My heritage is Gypsy. Since my birth and until May 1942 I have lived in the New
Jankovac village, Vinkovci, where I worked as a collector and salesman. In my
spare time I burned coal since I owned no land. I had a family consisting of my
wife Kaja, 30 years old, and three children, Živko, who was 12 years old, Marko,
7 years old, and Katica, 4 years old. About 830 Gypsies lived in New Jankovac at
the start of the war. In May of 1942, sometime before the Saints holiday, the
Independent State of Croatia magistrate summoned all the heads of the families to
register all members of their family. During the interviews we were informed that
we would be moved to somewhere in Romania or Banat, and that there we would
receive our own land and home. However, that same night, armed, uniformed men
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rounded up our Gypsy community, and we were all forbidden to leave. The next
morning we were forced out of our homes and were escorted to the town
Vinkovci. We had only the necessities and some food with us. Some of the
Gypsies, who owned horses, gathered their belongings on wagons and took them
along. When we arrived in Vinkovci, the Ustasha began to beat upon us with
sticks, pushing us into a secluded area, fenced by barbwire, right next to the river
behind the bridge. We spent the night there, and I noticed that Gypsies from the
villages Mikanovci and Privlaka were summoned to the same spot with us. The
following morning, we were taken to the train station and shoved into cattle
wagons that were shut behind us. We could take only the most necessary things,
while the horses and all the rest of our belongings remained where we had spent
the previous night. We were locked up in the train the whole afternoon, until the
train finally began to move. The wagons were overcrowded, and we could not get
anything to eat or drink. We knew we have been deceived and would die, and in
the realization of our circumstances, many Gypsies wailed and cried. Early the
next morning, right after sunrise, we arrived in Jasenovac. The train stopped in
front of the camp; once again, the Ustasha pushed us toward barbwired area. They
separated us from our women and children, and men were ordered to turn in all
their money and anything else of value. Then they were taken back into the
fenced area, with no buildings or living quarters. I believe about 1000 men were
present there. About 20 meters away was another barbed wire fence where the
Ustasha placed our wives and children. Our camp was situated next to the bank of
the river Sava. That day the men remained untouched, but we received no food.
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During the night we could hear occasional cry outs and shouting, and we knew
that the Ustasha were raping our wives and daughters. The following morning, the
Ustasha led a group of women and children out of the fenced area and took them
somewhere. Since their fenced area was in my eyesight, I saw that my wife Kaja
and our children were in the group. Almost an hour later, the guards came to our
camp and asked if anyone was willing to work. I replied in the affirmative
because I wanted to find out what happened to my wife and children. A small
group of Gypsies volunteered along with me. The 12 of us were separated, and
under armed accompaniment, we were taken by the ferry to the other side of the
river Sava, to Gradina. I could not find the group of women and children I was
looking for, but instead found myself in an uninhibited area with some barracks.
We were given shovels and asked to dig a pit about 20 to 30 meters from the bank
of the river. That day we went about digging two holes, each about 8x5 meters
and probably 3 meters deep. These pits were next to each other, with 3 meters of
space between them. When we returned from work that night, we noticed that the
guards protected the barracks, and it was obvious that there were people inside the
barracks. Around 10 or 11 that same night, we could hear shouting and wailing
coming from the direction of Gradina and the barracks. The following morning
we were led back to work and we passed by the holes we had dug out. As we
approached the holes, I saw a pile of Gypsy women's wear. As I arrived at the
sight of the holes, I was devastated to see that the space between the holes was
drenched in blood. The holes were half way filled and covered with dirt.
However, the dirt could not completely cover the bodies in the hole, so that the
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contents of these pits remained visible. All of us were shocked at the sight. One of
the men from our group, Uzo Mitrovic, Gypsy from Novi Jankovaci, about 40
years old, whose wife was with the previously mentioned group of women and
children, began to scream and jumped into the river. The Ustasha immediately
fired shots after him and he never again emerged from the depths of the river. The
rest of us dug more pits that day. As we were returning to our camp that evening,
we noticed another group of women on the other side of the Sava bank. There
were about 50 or 60 souls in the group. I did not notice any children. They carried
nothing with them. After we crossed the river, they were all pushed onto the ferry
and were transported to Gradina. That night we heard more shouting and
screaming coming from Gradina. The third day we dug in Gradina, however,
these pits were about 200 meters away from the other pits. Since I did not pass the
holes we dug out the day before, I could not see if anything was in them. That
evening when we returned to the camp, there were no women and children in the
neighboring camp. The men asked us if we saw them anywhere. I cannot recall if
I heard any cries and shouting that night. The fourth day we dug out holes about a
kilometer away from the bank. That day another group of Gypsies was brought to
help dig the holes, and I remember seeing Mitrovic Toso and Mitrovic Milan,
both Gypsies from Novi Jankovaci, that still live there today. The Ustasha led
away another group of about 50 men in the direction of the hole we had finished
the day before.
They were wearing only their underwear. One of the men in the group jumped out
and ran our direction. He ran for some time, and then, hit by the bullets of the
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Ustasha, he fell into a puddle of mud in front of him. The guards that were
keeping an eye on us told us to lie down flat on our stomachs and not to look in
the direction of the other group, so we would not know what was happening. I put
the palms of my hands over my eyes; however, I managed to peek through my
fingers, and since the terrain was flat, I could see that the Ustasha began hitting
the group of men with some heavy objects. I assume they were hammers or some
sort of heavy sticks, because rows of men began falling to the ground immediately
after being hit. They were probably tied up together with strings, and once one fell
into the pit, the others followed. We could hear shooting and shouting. This took
place in a short amount of time, maybe 200 or 300 meters away from us. After
they were done, they commanded us to stop working, and we again went to the
north bank of the river Sava, where we carried some bricks.
Figure 17: Photo of an Ustasha in a pile of dead Gypsy bodies, as well as a photo of a mass execution,
dates unknown. Sometimes Gypsies were part of the executions, in hope of being kept alive if they
cooperated (courtesy of JRI and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).
The next day we dug more next to a graveyard, with some uninhabited houses in
its proximity. One day we almost got shot at that spot, because a group of guards
assumed that we were to be executed, and as we were ordered to lie down flat on
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the ground our guards showed up, and explained that we were hole-diggers. I
remember that I met a group of Gypsy men that night as we returned from digging
holes. There were about 100 to 120 men, all tied with wire. They were men from
our camp, and among them I saw my father and asked him, where he was going to
which he replied “To a dinner.” It was forbidden to carry on a conversation of any
sort, and one of the guards hit me in the head. That night, in our camp, the only
men we noticed were those performing physical labor, while the rest of men had
been taken somewhere else. As we passed the cemetery the following day, we
saw the holes we dug out the days before. They were almost filled to the brim
with earth, and everywhere around them lay articles of clothes. We could also see
through a broken door a pile of clothes in one of the houses next to the cemetery. I
dug holes in Gradina for 12 days. During that time, I saw that transports of men,
women, and children arrived to Gradina, without even passing through the camps.
I remember that one of these groups was ordered to sing some wedding songs. I
assume they were all killed and piled into the holes we dug every day. Due to the
fear that we might get killed ourselves just like the other men in the camp, we dug
a passage beneath the wire one night as it rained hard and fog covered the guards'
sight, and escaped. Shots were fired on the group and some men got hit and died,
but I can't tell who the men were, because I was one of the first people to escape.
Later I met up with my two Gypsy friends, Toso and Milan Mitrovic, who
escaped with me that night and were able to save their lives. After the escape, I
joined the Partisans, and stayed with them until the end of the war. From the
members of my family that were taken to the camp, no one ever returned. It is
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obvious that they were murdered and thrown into the pits I dug. From the Gypsies
who lived in Novi Jankovaci, only five or six souls were able to survive, while all
the rest died in Jasenovac. Among those who died were my father, Tanasije, 60
years old, mother Mileva, 60 years old; my brother Marko, 32 years old, his wife
Julka, 30 years old and their two children Luka, 6 years old and Katica 4 years
old; as well as my brothers Stevo, 15 years old and Slavko, 8 years old (Ackovic
33-40, my translation).
Next to the witnesses of the Gypsies who escaped the concentration camp and
survived the war fighting or hiding, Ackovic’s book presents witness accounts of those in
charge of round ups. Among them, he included an account of a notary who helped
summoned the Gypsies from his village to be taken to the camps. The account of this
witness is a testimonial to the knowledge and helplessness or lack of desire of the people
to do anything about the fate that awaited Gypsies. The minutes were taken on 21 August
1951, during the witness hearing of Ivan Bauer, 41 years old, conducted in the court of
Djakovo, Kotor, in a lawsuit against Dr. Andrija Artukovic, who was charged with
murder:
During the occupation I was a notary in the village of Strizivojna, Kotar Djakovo.
I was born in a neighboring village, Vrpolju and was a notary for the Strizivojna
village even before the occupation. Because of the nature of my work, I was
familiar with the internal affairs of the village itself. During the occupation, I had
to execute tasks given me by the Independent State of Croatia Ministry with great
urgency. One day, I do not remember the exact day any more, I believe it was in
August of 1942, the police authorities came to my house, and demanded a list of
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our local village guards, which they needed to employ that night. At first, they did
not want to tell me why they needed the list. Later, however, they did admit that
they received an order from Kotor, and Kotor from Zupe, to transport that
evening, or better said that night, all the Gypsies residing on the territory of the
village to a camp. I immediately informed the village guards and assisted the
police authorities with the lists of village guards. In the evening that same day, or
to be exact that night, after the Gypsies had already retired, the police officers
woke them up and rounded them up. They were all arrested and taken to the camp
Jasenovac. From there only a handful returned, while all the rest died in the camp.
If I recall correctly, there were ten families of Gypsy heritage, with about 60
family members that lived in the village at that time. They were honest and
respectful people, so they did not do any of their “usual” business. The Gypsies
were surprised, very frightened and did not show any resistance to the orders, but
executed them according to guards’ instructions. By the next morning they were
all in the Jasenovac camp. I remember that among those Gypsies in Strizivojno,
there also lived the family of Josip Filipovic, who was in the military at that time.
His wife and five small children were all taken to the camp and, according to the
testimonies of those that returned, were liquidated. I know exactly that, to this
day, they have not returned to the village, thus I believe that they did die in the
camp. I know that Nikolic Joca, who was about 50 years old at that time, with his
wife and three children did not return from the camp nor did any members of his
family. I correct my testimony, Nikolic Joca was with his wife only, and did not
have any children, but Nikolic Aleksandar had the children I previously
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mentioned when I spoke of Nikolic Joca. Among the Gypsies taken was also
Nikolic Laza, about 50 years old, who was married and had two children. As I
said before, about 10 or 15 families were taken to the camp that night. I was
interested to find out where these orders were coming from, and why they were
issued. I found out that Dr. Andrija Artukovic issued the orders for all Gypsies in
the Independent State of Croatia to be arrested and taken to the camp Jasenovac. I
am certain that after that order, all the Gypsies in the territory of the Djakovo
region were taken to the camp, and that only a few returned. Nothing else of this
matter has come to my knowledge, except for the rumor I heard that all Gypsies in
the territory of the state were taken to the camp at about the same time as the ones
from our village. Signed, Ivan Bauer (Ackovic 13-16, my translation).
From these and other accounts it follows that the Ustasha treated all the Gypsies
with the same brutality. Whether they were nomads, or lived in the community they were
rounded up and deported. Sometimes Ustasha played with the prisoners by fostering in
them false hopes of survival. They pretended to be willing to free those who collaborated,
assisted in executions, or did other acts of “service.” This false pretence was first noticed
in the case of children. The Ustasha did not have a clear agenda as to what should be
done with the prisoner’s children. For one reason or another, they let the children live,
only to implement a harsher action. This is vividly shown in the following account about
the children:
Throughout 1942, Camp III-C was swarming with children brought to Jasenovac
together with their parents. During liquidations, many children lost track of their
parents, and other prisoners took them in. Many prisoners thus hid the orphans
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whose mothers and fathers had been killed, sharing their meals and depriving
themselves of food for the benefit of children. Inmates permitted to receive
packages with food from home gave all of it to the children. Near the end of the
summer of 1942, Luburic (a camp officer) noticed the children in the attics of
workshops and in the barracks, and he ordered the Ustasha to search the whole
camp. Thus it was discovered that there were over four hundred boys and girls in
the camp, ranging from four to fourteen years of age. Luburic consulted with his
officers and—to the inmates’ surprise—had the children registered and placed in
special rooms. He identified several male and female teachers among the inmates,
and ordered them to teach the children to read, write, and sing. This little
“kindergarten” became the sole joy of the inmates in the camp. Their happiness
did not last long. Matkovic Ivica, Kapetanovic and Sliskovic Ivan were not
satisfied with the results; it seemed to them that the children’s upbringing did not
emphasize enough the Ustasha spirit. Aside from that, they had established that
these children were mostly Serbian and Jewish. When Luburic returned to
Jasenovac, they reported their findings to him. He ordered that they be killed,
particularly as they had become a burden to the supply budget. The Ustasha took
the children in groups of sixty to eighty each to Gradina, where the Gypsies killed
and buried them (Djuric 50).
After this mass killing of children, every Ustasha had free range in dealing with a child in
whichever manner he pleased. An additional account shows the brutality with which
children were treated:
125
In the Dakovo camp, the Ustasha tormented children before the eyes of their
mothers by throwing breadcrumbs among the starving children and setting police
dogs on them as soon as they approached the bread. When a raging dog had bitten
a child, they locked the child and the dog in some corner of the camp, before the
eyes of the horrified mothers. While one could hear the screaming of the child
that was struggling with the incited dog, the Ustasha played harmonicas (Dedijer
292).
Figure 18: Children were among the first victims of starvation. Often they were used as objects of
sexual satisfaction for the guards’ entertainment, or as dog’s food (courtesy of JRI).
From its forms of forced labor to death of children, Jasenovac was a camp
established for the purification of the country for the benefit of the Aryan race, and as
such was perfect for the disposal of all undesirable races and people, both old and young.
126
One can pose the question whether Jasenovac can be numbered in a list of “true
death camps.” Did it have a crematorium like Auschwitz and some other death camps
throughout the German occupied territory? One of the reasons why the Ustasha chose this
site was to solve the problem of having to build a crematorium. Among the many
factories in the Jasenovac area, was also the Ciglana tile factory, with its big tile ovens.
These ovens were often used as crematoriums and as means of disposal after mass
executions.
Figure 19: The tile factory, which was converted to a crematorium (courtesy of JRI).
The tile ovens seemed to be insufficient by themselves, however, maybe because
they were not brutal enough. They were employed only in combination with other torture
techniques mentioned in this chapter. Dedijer describes how this was done:
127
…Picili set to work to reconstruct an oven…in the tile factory. He divided the big
tile oven into several ovens with a common chimney. Each oven could hold a
train-car-load of people, i.e., forty to fifty and twice as many children. In this
improvised Ustasha crematorium 450 to 460 people were incinerated in one night.
I saw this oven when I walked through the execution site. It was a long tunnel.
The individual ovens were very large and wide, about 3x4x3 meters. The door
was opened from outside, from the tunnel.
The people were brought into the notorious tunnel right up to the oven; there they
stayed until night. Then they were killed with rods, knives, axes, wooden
hammers, iron hammers, or sometimes with a pistol or a rifle. This caused a
terrible panic, but no one could get out of the tunnel. The prisoners huddled
together with bloody heads; they were completely beside themselves, and
everyone tried to hide behind someone else. They almost suffocated, they
screamed, and they pled to God. But everyone had to die and neither God nor
anyone else could offer a single spark of hope. The Ustasha surrounded them in
this arena, and there was no escape. Some would lie down and pretend to be dead
in hope to be saved that way. These suffered the most. The janitors and
crematorium employees came and bore them to the big iron door. One opened the
hellish gate and a hot, stinking stream of air heated the faces. The victim was
thrown into the fire of this pyre of Jasenovac; screams could be heard, millions of
sparks from the body’s fall and its last twitches were blown upwards, flames rose,
then the dull thud of the heavy iron door. The dead could, of course, not cry
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anymore; they only caused millions of sparks to rise and spread the smell of
burning human flesh, an evil, sweet stink (241).
In essence of the word death camp, the activities in Jasenovac, one of the most brutal
torture places in all of Yugoslavia, would rightfully classify it as a “true death camp.”
The ends of death at Jasenovac:
Repeated attempts of break out were unique to Jasenovac camps. The attempts to
escape from other camps under German rule are not frequently mentioned in the
Holocaust literature. Some of the attempts to escape from Jasenovac were successful, but
many more were unsuccessful. The few successful attempts occurred in the beginning of
the camp’s existence. At this point prisoners were still physically able and strong enough
to break out and fight. The additional advantage was that the guards were still unfamiliar
with the grounds. Unlike the prisoners in any other camp, prisoners in Jasenovac were
native to the land, and knew the region and the conditions that awaited them once they
escaped. This gave them a greater hope for survival and courage to attempt an escape,
since is was their country and their home. In one of these brave undertakings, my
grandmother escaped with a group of resistance fighters and fought her way through the
woods in winter to the Partisans. But after the winter of 1942, that same terrain became
the main obstacle for any attempts of liberation from outside. The flat area around the
camp afforded visibility for kilometers. A surprise attack was impossible. As the war
progressed, some air attacks by allied force on March 30 and 31 announced to the
Ustasha guards and the prisoners that the winds of war were changing. During the
“bombing about 40 prisoners were killed and many wounded. Fires broke out and set off
129
several explosions” (Djuric 57). It became necessary to clean up and destroy any
evidence still in existence:
At the beginning of April 1945, the Ustasha were preparing the liquidation of the
Jasenovac camp in order to remove the traces of their crimes before escaping. The
ultimate liquidation of the Camp was begun on April 20, when the last large
group of women and children was executed. On April 22, 1945, under the
leadership of Ante Vukotic, about 600 people armed with bricks, poles, hammers
and other things, broke down the doors, shattered windows and ran out of the
building. About 470 people were sick and unable to fight barehanded with the
armed Ustasha, so they did not take part in the rebellion. The 150 meter long path
to the east gate of the camp was covered by the crossfire of the Ustasha machineguns, and many prisoners were killed there. A large number of them were killed
on the barbwires of the camp. About hundred prisoners managed to break out
through the broken gate of the camp. Only 80 prisoners survived while 520 of
them died in the first assault. The Ustasha later killed the remaining 470 within
the camp (Bulajic 1997).
The Ustasha continued to kill, burn, and set on fire everything within the walls of
the camp through the first two days of May 1945. The camp was liberated on May 2,
1945. Or better said, the camp was approached that day, because at that point there was
nothing left to liberate:
The Jasenovac camp was not liquidated until the very last battles were being
fought. The Yugoslav Army forces entered the Stara Gradiska camp on April 23,
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and Jasenovac on May 2, 1945. Before leaving the camp, the Ustasha killed the
remaining prisoners, blasted and destroyed the buildings, guardhouses, torture
rooms, the “Picili Furnace” and all other structures. Upon entering the camp, the
liberators found only ruins, soot, smoke, and dead bodies (Bulajic 1997).
Figure 20: Children and adult survivors liberated by the Partisan army at the end of April 1945.
None of these people were liberated from Jasenovac, but from smaller camps through out Croatia
and Serbia. Jasenovac produced only the corpses of dead people (courtesy of JRI).
131
Many of the pictures available and used to document the atrocities of Jasenovac
were mostly found in the pockets and in the possession of the Ustasha guards, who loved
taking pictures of their brutality. During the Ustasha trials only a handful of survivors
testified, and there were only a few Gypsies among these witnesses. All these survivors
escaped the camp. None survived in the camp to tell their story. This unfortunately did
not stop the accused from bearing false testimonies. At the trial of the Franciscan
Miroslav Majstorovic, one of the Commanders in Jasenovac, also known under nickname
“Brother Satan,” he testified in the following manner:
Killing of prisoners with wooden hammers took place in Gradina; specifically the
victim climbed down into the ditch and was then hit from behind with the
hammer. The murders also took place by shooting and slaughtering. I know that
in the liquidation of girls and women in Gradina, the younger ones were raped.
The decision about this was made by Ivica Matkovic, while, as far as I know, the
Gypsies, specifically the grave diggers among them, committed the rapes. I
myself committed no rapes (Dedijer 283).
Such and similar testimonies, though only few in number blamed Gypsies for the
gruesome atrocities. All those Gypsies accused were dead and buried in one of the many
pits. They could not stand to defend themselves against accusations of having raped their
own women and children. Once again, the stereotype and prejudice toward the Gypsy
race was used to hide the atrocities. Gypsies, who suffered on the grounds of racial
discrimination, and who were tortured and belittled, did not receive an invitation to
testify and receive any reparation costs. European communities did little to break down
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the prejudice toward them, but concentrated on Jewish question. Gypsies continued being
used as scapegoats, and their name was made dirty through claims such as the one made
by “Brother Satan.” Thus, their Holocaust was not over yet.
Epilogue to the deaths at Jasenovac:
In the year 1965, the government set up a memorial site due to persistent pressure
coming from the survivors and from the families of those who died. The big stone flower,
built as a monument for all the fallen prisoners, reached to the skies as it opened towards
it in hope, pleading with God to accept the souls and spirits of those whose mortal
remains lay spread over the Jasenovac grounds. In 1991, the new Croatian State declared
Jasenovac Memorial Area, due to its flora and fauna, as an area of protection, and
reduced its significance as a Memorial Site of victims of WWII Yugoslavia:
At the end of September 1991, the Croatian Army entered the Jasenovac
memorial park by force. According to the Hague Convention on the protection of
historical and cultural monuments, the Croatian Army severely broke the
agreement by entering the protected area. Although the international public was
informed about the desecration of the memorial park, there was no response. The
Serbian forces liberated Jasenovac Memorial Park on October 8, 1991. During its
withdrawal, the Croatian Army placed explosives and blew up the bridge across
the River Sava, which connected the two parts of the Memorial Park; they also
blew up the graves, destroyed the Museum artifacts and stole the Museum
equipment. Individuals who worked at the Memorial Park saved some historical
materials and objects through courageous and enthusiastic efforts (Bulajic 1997).
133
Among the destroyed objects was the stone flower, a memorial to the dead people.
Reconstruction of the stone flower has not been discussed since the destruction. The war
and the civil conflict within the country swept away the memory of death and devastation
that went on in Jasenovac. Along with this memory is the memory of the victims. They
were not only Jews or Serbs, they were Croats, and Gypsies. All became the same as their
corpses were piled in the pits and burned in the ovens. However, the historians have not
remembered them as equal in their agony, and have used the lack of material and
information to push the memory of Gypsies aside. Their plight was marginalized because
they were only “asocial, criminals, thieves and beggars.”
Figure 1: “Cvet” of Jasenovac. The flower of Jasenovac, designed by Bogdan Bogdanovic, stood to
suggest the “idea of overcoming suffering and insanity.” Museum was built underneath the flower.
Some documetaries made from the original footage taken by the Ustasha, photographs, and artifacts
such as these handcuffs, and prisoner’s shoes were available to visitors and the public (courtesy of
JRI).
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Chapter 4:
Porrajmos, The Great Devouring
In the Roma language, the experience of World War II has assumed the common
name of Porrajmos or “The Great Devouring.” Where as secondary literature uses the
term Holocaust to refer to a systematic killing and devastating loss of life in
concentration camps and Shoah to a unique experience of Jews in Nazi Germany and
occupied territory, the great devouring speaks of the Gypsy annihilation in the past and at
the same time of their present plight in not being recognized with other victims:
The Anti-Defamation League’s website defines Holocaust as “the systematic
persecution and annihilation of more than six million Jews as a central act of state
by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.” The program for
the 33rd Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches defines
it as “the Nazi attempt to annihilate European Jewry,” and makes no mention in
its pages of Roma people (Hancock 2003:2).
The “Holocaust” of the Gypsies did not end the day Nazi Germany capitulated.
Unfortunately it continued, but its form has changed. The lack of records and definite
numbers make it difficult to give an accurate statement on how many Gypsies died.
Misinformation about Gypsies in World War II continues to be a problem, and many
scholars debate whether Gypsies should be included in the Holocaust at all. Thus in the
numbers game and in continued ignorance of Gypsies’ inclusion in the Final solution on
racial basis, Porrajmos continues to eat at the memory of those who died and the lives of
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those who desperately try to commemorate the souls of the victims. The Nobel Prize
winning author Günter Grass explains this by saying:
Weil die Roma, zu denen auch die in Deutschland lebenden Sinti gehören, wie
kein anderes Volk, außer dem der Juden, anhaltender Verfolgung,
Benachteiligung und in Deutschland der planmässigen Vernichtung ausgesetzt
gewesen sind. Dieses Unrecht hält bis heute an. Selbst als Opfer der
verbrecherischen Rassenpolitik während der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus werden
die Roma und mit ihnen die Sinti nur zögerlich anerkannt; während der
Völkermord an den Juden, wenn auch gegen Widerstände, sich unserem
Bewusstsein eingeprägt hat, wird die Vernichtung von mehreren hunderttausend,
das heißt, ungezählten „nichtslebenswerten Zigeunern“ in den Vernichtungslagern
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Treblinka und an vielen anderen Orten des
Schreckens allenfalls beiläufig erwähnt. Schlimmer noch: Als es vor einigen
Jahren in Berlin darum ging, ein Denkmal für die Opfer des Rassenwahns zu
errichten, sollte ausschließlich der ermordeten Juden gedacht werden. Verlegen
und mit hinhaltenden Ausreden wurden die ermordeten Zigeuner sozusagen auf
die Warteliste gesetzt. Bei allem guten Willen, den ich den um das Denkmal
bemühten Gremien und Initiativen nicht absprechen will, blieb es bisher bei dieser
empörenden Ausgrenzung, als stünde das Volk der Roma und ihre Opfer noch
immer unter dem Verdikt, einer minderwertigen Rasse anzugehören...Ihre
Existenz ist von gleich bleibend starren Vorurteilen beschwert. Man hat sie
diskriminiert, verfolgt und während zwölf Jahren, als nach deutschen
Rassengesetzen Recht gesprochen wurde, deportiert und in Konzentrationslagern
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ermodert. Sie werden, wenn Schuld eingestanden wird, vergessen oder allenfalls
beiläufig genannt…Sie sind wie ohne Stimme (Grass 13, 14, 34, 35).
Ignorance about the Gypsies’ Holocaust:
On 16 September 1986, as Elie Wiesel addressed a wide range of audience in his
Nobel Peace Prize speech, he stated:
I confess that I feel somewhat guilty towards our Roma friends. We have not done
enough to listen to your voice of anguish. We have not done enough to make
other people listen to your voice of sadness. I can promise you we shall do
whatever we can from now on to listen better (Tanner 1997).
His speech was one of few moments of public acknowledgment of the lack of help
Gypsies have received in their fight for recognition. However, only a year earlier, in
1985, the Mayor of the City of Darmstadt, Guenther Metzger, told the Central Council of
the German Sinti and Roma that their request for recognition "insult[ed] the honor of the
memory of the Holocaust victims by aspiring to be associated with them" (Tanner 1997).
This statement shows that the struggle has received a new shape. It is an old
battle, however, that began after World War II:
Only ten percent of the hundreds of millions of dollars made available by the
United Nations for the survivors, and which the U.S. Government was given the
responsibility of disbursing, was set aside for non-Jews, and none of that found its
way to the Roma survivors, who number today about 5,000. Roma were not
mentioned anywhere in the documentation of the U.S. War Refugee Board, which
was able to save the lives of over 200,000 Jews. When the U.S. Holocaust
137
Memorial Council was established in 1980, no Roma were invited to participate,
and it only has one Roma member today. Roma are barely a part of its Museum
even now, being located in a corner on the third-floor set aside for "other victims"
(Hancock 1997).
The war did a little to stop the centuries-long prejudice against the darker skinned
people, who found themselves in an eternal devouring with Jews: “the Roma have
traveled a road which differs little from pre-war roads. They still face discriminatory
laws, deportation, violence, and exclusion, with war crimes reparations yet to be paid to
them” (Miller 1998). Yet many statements have been made and published that hold
Gypsies responsible for their own fate, due to their asocial and criminal nature, which
made them “unsafe” and justified their persecution:
In 1950, the Württemburg Ministry of the Interior issued a statement to the judges
hearing war crimes restitution claims that they should keep in mind that “the
Gypsies were persecuted under the National Socialist regime not for any racial
reason, but because of their criminal and antisocial record,” and twenty-one years
later the Bonn Convention took advantage of this as justification for not paying
reparations to Roma people, claiming that the reasons for their victimization
during the Nazi period were for reasons of security only (Hancock 2003:1).
Other statements, though paying tribute to Gypsy suffering during the years of Holocaust,
make sure to underline the uniqueness of the racial question in Jewish favor:
In the final analysis, as Steven Katz has correctly concluded, “it was only Jews
and Jews alone who were the victims of a total genocidal onslaught in both
content and practice at the hand of the Nazi murderers.” Nazi policy toward
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Gypsies lacked the kind of single-minded fanaticism that characterized the
murderous assault upon the Jews. Entire categories of Gypsies, such as the
‘socially adjusted’ and the ‘sedentary,’ were generally given more lenient
treatment. The Gypsies were considered a ‘nuisance’ and a ‘plague’ but not a
major threat to the German people and that is why their treatment differed from
that of the Jews…The Gypsy people suffered terribly under the Nazi regime, and
there is really no need to exaggerate the horrors they experienced. In order to
comprehend fully what happened and why it happened we must pay attention not
only to the decisions and decrees issued by the perpetrators but also to the
attitudes of the German people to the Gypsy minority. Simplified accounts
according to which “Gypsies, like the Jews, were persecuted and annihilated
simply and solely on account of their biological existence” are not only a
distortion of the historical record but also a hindrance to progress in the
relationship between Gypsies and non-Gypsies. Only if we understand why all
strata of German society with so much distrust and hostility regarded the Gypsies
will we be able to confront the sources of such propensities and prevent their
recurrence (Lewy 225, 227-228).
As Lewy said, we need to tell the truth. Which side, however, resembles the truth?
Those who do not support Lewy’s thinking are outraged at the attempt to undermine the
Gypsies’ place in the Holocaust books and discussions:
One of the more disgusting means by which Jewish exclusivists have nonetheless
attempted to do so, however, concerns their verbatim regurgitation of the Nazi
fable that, again contra the Jews, Gypsies were killed en mass, not on specifically
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racial grounds, but because as a group they were "asocial" (criminals). And, as if
this blatantly racist derogation weren't bad enough, the Rabbi Seymour Siegel, a
former professor of ethics at the Jewish Theological Seminary and at the time
executive director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, compounded the
affront by using the pages of the Washington Post to publicly cast doubt as to
whether Gypsies can even make a legitimate claim to comprising a distinct people
(Churchill 1997).
To tear down the usual stereotypes, Roma organizations began uniting in the
1970s and are becoming stronger and gaining more support in intellectual circles. Their
fight is creating an echo, and this echo has caused the debates to continue:
Hartnäckig hält sich bis heute die Legende, die Sinti und Roma seien irgendwie
zufällig mit in die Mordaktion geraten. Das stimmt nicht. Der Völkermord an den
Sinti und Roma ist aus dem gleichen Motiv des Rassenwahns, mit dem gleichen
Vorsatz, mit dem gleichen Willen zur plannmässigen und endgültigen
Vernichtung durchgeführt worden wie der an den Juden. Ich möchte daran
erinnern, dass der Reichsinnenminister Frick bereits am 3. Januar 1936 verfügte,
die „Nürnberger Rassengesetze“ seien genauso auf die Sinti und Roma wie auf
die Juden anzuwenden. Justizminister Thierack notierte 1942, dass „Juden und
Zigeuner schlechthin vernichtet werden sollen“. Hitler selbst ordnete gegenüber
Himmler die ausnahmslose Deportation aller Sinti und Roma in die
Vernichtungslager an. Sie wurden daher im ganzen Einflussbereich der
Nationalsozialisten systematisch und familienweise vom Kleinkind bis zum Greis
ermordet (Romani Rose 14).
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A bold statement from Professor Herzog, a Roma activist and representative of
Roma and Sinti organization in Germany, shapes the fundamental claim for which
Gypsies have fought in last fifty years. The documentary evidences to support his claim
are many and clear:
The term (Lebensunwertesleben) was first used in print by Liebich in 1863 to
refer specifically to Roma; it was used six years later in an essay by Kulemannonce more solely to refer to Roma and again in the title of Binding & Hoche’s
influential 1920 treatise on euthanasia. And it was used yet again just one year
after Hitler came to power as the title of a law ordering sterilization, which was
directed inter alia at the Roma. Roma were classified as possessing “alien” (i.e.
non-Aryan) blood along with Jews and people of African descent following the
1935 Nuremberg Laws, and in November that year marriage between members of
those three groups and Germans was made illegal. Statements against Roma
referring to their being a “racial” problem are numerous and well documented
(Hancock 2000).
As was the case of Jewish plight, Gypsies were persecuted, rounded up, and
annihilated because they were a “subhuman race,” and their presence endangered the
dream of Adolf Hitler. To show they were a social and racial threat “at Auschwitz, Gypsy
prisoners wore a "Z" for Zigeuner (Gypsy) tattooed on their left arm and a black triangle,
for "asocial," was sewn into their clothes. The Nazis entered them into the Gypsy
register with simply a "Z" after their names, for just being a Gypsy was reason enough
for them to have been arrested. At the hands of the SS (Schutzstaffel), the Roma faced
"scientific" and "medical" experiments in addition to death in the gas chambers” (Miller
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1998). And yet, these facts seem not to be enough to acknowledge the pain and sorrow of
the Gypsies as a race, but have rather been a cause for heated debates, and I dare say, a
war of words in which some scholars deny Gypsies the right of claiming persecution on
racial grounds, since they were not systematically killed as Jews were:
Several writers have written that there was no Final Solution of the Gypsy
Question, for example Breitman (1991:20) who wrote “whatever its weaknesses,
‘Final Solution’ at least applies to a single, specific group defined by descent. The
Nazis are not known to have spoken of the Final Solution of the Polish problem or
of the Gypsy problem.” Nevertheless the earliest Nazi document referring to “the
introduction of the total solution to the Gypsy problem on either a national or an
international level” was drafted under the direction of State Secretary Hans
Pfundtner of the Reichs Ministry of the Interior in March, 1936, and the first
specific reference to “the final solution of the Gypsy question” was made by
Adolf Würth of the Racial Hygiene Research Unit in September, 1937. The first
official Party statement to refer to the endgültige Lösung der Zigeunerfrage was
issued in March, 19389, signed by Himmler (Hancock 2003: 3).
Another example of this debate explains the exclusion stating:
Lucy Dawidowicz, for instance, when she mentions the Gypsies at all, is prone to
repeating the standard mythology that, "of about one million Gypsies in the
countries that fell under German control, nearly a quarter of them were
murdered." The point being made is that while Gypsy suffering was no doubt
"unendurable," it was proportionately far less than that of the Jews… In sum, it is
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plain that the proportional loss of the Gypsies during the Holocaust was at least as
great as that of the Jews (Churchill 1997)…Consider the example of the Sinti and
Roma people (Gypsies, also called "Romani"), whom [Deborah] Lipstadt doesn't
deign to accord so much as mention in her book. Her omission is no doubt due to
an across-the-board and steadfast refusal of the Jewish scholarly, social and
political establishments over the past fifty years to even admit the Gypsies were
part of the Holocaust (Churchill 1997).
The numbers game in Yugoslavia:
In an interview with Alex Bandy, Professor Waclaw Dlugoborski, one of editors
of the Auschwitz Memorial Book, agreed on the difficulty of settling the exact numbers
of Gypsies’ death in World War II, saying that “figures for the number of Gypsies killed
in all of Europe vary between 200,000 and 500,000, firstly because the Gypsies were not
registered, secondly because many were killed in transit and there is no record of their
graves" (Bandy 1997). A scholar in the field, Ian Hancock, comments:
Of the estimated ca. 20,000 Roma in Germany in 1939, fully three quarters had
been murdered by 1945. Of the 11,200 in Austria, a half was murdered. Of the
50,000 in Poland, 35,000; in Croatia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Lithuania and
Luxembourg, almost the entire Roma populations were eradicated (Hancock
2000).
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Ukupno
Godina popisa
Roma
The census
number of
year
Roma
Udeo Roma u stanovništvu Srbije i
Crne Gore
Percentage of Roma in the population
of Serbia and Montenegro
1948.
72.736
0.5
1953.
84.713
0.5
1961.
31.674
0.2
1971.
78.485
0.2
1981.
168.197
0.7
Figure 34: The census from years 1948, 1953, 1961, 1971 and 1981. The number of Roma on the
territory of Yugoslavia and their percentage in the census of Serbian and Montenegro population,
though recorded, are uncertain (courtesy of Federal Ministry of ethnic and minority Committees,
Belgrade, etnickatolerancija.org.yu).
According to the official statistics from the year 1931, there were no Gypsies in
Yugoslavia. Rather, “they are classified in the statistics as Greek Orthodox, Roman
Catholic or Muslim (under religion), or as people who speak “Serbo-Croatian,”
“Slovenian” or “other” languages (Ackovic 28, my translation). However, according to
the statistics taken after the war, a sudden percentage of Gypsies was found in all of the
republics of Yugoslavia. Thus, the census of 1953 states, that “from 17,000,000
inhabitants in Yugoslavia-84,713 or 0.5 percent are Gypsies: 58,800 in Serbia, 20,462 in
Macedonia, 2,297 in Bosnia, 1, 663 in Slovenia, 1,200 in Croatia and 230 in
Montenegro” (Ackovic 46, my translation). This statistic does not reflect the correct
number of Gypsies in Yugoslavia because many still declare themselves as Serbs,
Albanians, Macedonians, Turks, Romanian, or as “other:”
However, the information and the official statistics need to be considered with
caution in the case of Roma population in Serbia and Montenegro in the year
2000. According to secondary sources, there are between 450,000 and 500,000
Roma living in what is today Serbia and Montenegro (Union Ministry of Ethnic
and Minority Committees 2001, my translation).
144
Figure 35: The loss of life recorded in 1964 census, by region and nationality (or race). A “Roma”
category is not included, thus their estimates are divided among various nationalities and the
“unknown” (courtesy of Philip Cohen 109).
The war in Yugoslavia and their systematic persecution made Roma very careful.
From various documentations and calculations pointed to in the previous chapter, it is
obvious that at least 40,000 Gypsies in Croatia died in the concentration camps at
Jasenovac, since all Gypsies on the territory of Croatia were deported to the camp. This
number, however, does not include Gypsies from the territory of Slovenia, Macedonia,
Montenegro, or Serbia. It is difficult to assess the number of Gypsies who lived in
Yugoslavia in 1941 and how many died during the years of the war. Most war statistics
do not even include “Gypsy” category. Slobodan Berberski, a Roma writer and activist
comments:
“In World War II alone, about half a million Roma were shot…However, the
exact number of how many Gypsies lived in Yugoslavia cannot be determined. I
don’t think anyone knows. No census forms indicated an option ‘Gypsy’ as a
possible declaration of race. And, if they wanted to lead decent lives, many of the
Roma were forced to declare something else, and hide their race. Some
abandoned their traditions, customs and belief system in order to avoid further
145
persecution. A person must have a lot of guts to say boldly: I am Gypsy. We are
speaking of years of constant persecution and humiliation! One must understand
the fear most Gypsies lived with all their lives (Ackovic 14, my translation).
The 1953 census then accounts for a small percentage of survivors, and if it were true that
prior to World War II, no Gypsies lived in Yugoslavia, then it still remains to explain the
numbers of Gypsies accounted for at Jasenovac camps. This game of numbers at the
Jasenovac death camps has, in recent years, become the most important symbol of
Yugoslavian devastation. Immediately after the war, Yugoslavian historians and writers
used the numbers to shift blame from one region to the other. Yet that secondary
literature, just as in the case of other camps, did very little in acknowledging of the
annihilation of the Gypsies and concentrated instead on the deaths of Serbian, Jewish,
and Croatian populations. On the other hand, because the documents of Serbian
involvement in the killing of Gypsies did not exist, or were very scarce, it was assumed
that no Gypsies ever died in Serbia, and that atrocities against Gypsies never took place.
In this battle of numbers, zeros were added and subtracted, and it is impossible
today to accurately determine the number that would reflect the truth:
The major problem of Jasenovac history lies in fixing the number of dead…Sadly,
there is little consensus on the total number of dead…Historians, using variety of
statistics, often arrived at startling different figures: Denic less than 100,000;
Vullimany around 600,000; Stitkovac ‘hundreds of thousands’; Dragnic: total in
NDH 500,000-700,000; Hall 750,000; Glenny 200,000; Ridley 330,000; and the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 300,000-400,000 (MacDonald 161).
146
The exact losses of Gypsy population will forever remain an estimate. In the years
since the war, too little time has been dedicated to researching the complete truth and to
recovering the records that would show the atrocities committed in the territories of
Serbia and Croatia alike. Now this information is not accessible, and witnesses have
passed on. The two opposing sides have tried to manipulate events and statistics in the
recent years of civil conflict, downplaying some numbers and exaggerating others. These
numbers could help determine what happened to thousands of Gypsies who lived in
Yugoslavia prior to World War II and who simply disappeared after 1941. The case of
Jasenovac statistics shows this:
It was vital to downplay the importance of Jasenovac to prove that the death camp
was insignificant by the standards of the Second World War. This performed
several important functions. The first was to minimize the historic guilt of Croatia
in the war by denouncing Serbian accusations as part of an insidious propaganda
campaign. This was meant to restore the prestige of the Croatian wartime record;
while exonerating the NDH…Tudjman played a starring role in this debate…His
theories were controversial. Using various statistics, he arrived at a total of 50,000
killed overall, not just Serbs, and not just at Jasenovac-but for all Ustasha camps
in Croatia. He estimated that between 30,000 and 40,000 inmates had died in
Jasenovac and he listed them as ‘Gypsies, Jews and Serbs, and even Croats’reversing the conventional order of deaths, to imply that more Gypsies and Jews
were killed than Serbs…Another high profile writer Ante Beljo, echoing
Tudjman’s earlier numbers, appears to support a total of 50,000 people killed at
Jasenovac, quoting Ivan Supek to the effect that the victims were ‘leftist Croats,
147
followed by some Serbs, Gypsies and Jews, but mainly Communists.’ Grmek,
Gjidara and Simac numbers include 18,000 Jews and some Gypsies and Croatians
(MacDonald 167, italics added).
Figure 36: The war census statistics done by Kocevic and Zerjavic estimate the losses on the territory
of Yugoslavia. Very little attention was given to Roma losses. A larger table with the overview of the
numbers appears later in the text, including statistics that are included as a footnote in the original
record copies. The statistics appear within the tale for better statistical overview (courtesy of Philip
Cohen 110, 111).
The following tables give an easier and more detailed overview of war statistics
calculated by two scholars in the field, Bogoljub Kocevic, a Serb, and Vladimir Zerjavic,
a Croat. The tables are taken from Zerjavic’s essay Losses of Life in Yugoslavia during
the World War II, published in 1989.
2. Losses by nationality
(in thousands)
Study by
Vladimir Žerjavić
Dr. Bogoljub Kočević
in country abroad
Y
u
g
s
l
a
v
s
total
Serbs
487
497
33
530
Croats
207
178
14
192
Slovenians
32
36
6
42
Montenegrins
50
20
-
20
Muslims
86
100
3
103
7
6
-
6
869
837
56
893
4
1
-
1
2
1
-
1
Macedonians
Total
Other
Czechoslovakians
slavs
nations Poles
148
Russians/Ukrainians
5
5
-
5
Bulgarians
1
-
-
-
12
7
-
7
Albanians
6
18
-
18
Turks
3
2
-
2
Jews
60
33
24
57
Gypsies
27
18
-
18
5
2
-
2
26
28
-
28
Italians
1
-
-
-
Romanians
4
-
-
-
others
1
2
-
2
Total
133
103
24
127
1.014
947
Total
Other
Hungarians
nations
Germans
Total
3. Losses by nationality
Nationalty
80 1.027
(in thousands)
Serbia
Bosnia &
Croatia Macedonia Montenegro Slovenia
Herzegovina
killed
Total
abroad
Total Serbia Vojvodina Kosovo
Serbs
164
131
6
6
-
190
142
45
3
33
530
Croats
64
106
-
1
-
7
-
6
1
14
192
Slovenians
-
2
-
1
32
1
-
-
1
6
42
Macedonians
-
-
6
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
6
Montenegrins
-
-
-
20
-
-
-
-
-
-
20
75
2
4
4
-
15
13
-
2
3
103
Czechoslovakians
-
1
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1
Poles
1
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1
Russians/Ukrainians
1
-
-
1
-
3
3
-
-
-
5
Hungarians
-
1
-
-
-
1
-
1
-
-
2
Germans
1
2
-
-
1
24
1
23
-
-
28
Albanians
-
-
-
4
-
14
-
-
14
-
18
Turks
-
-
1
-
-
1
-
-
1
-
2
Jews
9
10
-
-
-
14
7
7
-
24
57
Muslims
149
Gypsies
1
15
-
-
-
2
-
1
1
-
18
others
-
1
-
-
-
1
1
-
-
-
2
Total
316
271
17
27
33
273
167
83
23
80
1.027
The calculations estimate the number of Gypsy casualties from the low 27,000 to
an even lower 18,000. In another statistic, Edmond Paris, a historian in the field of World
War II, meets Kocevic’s estimation with a figure of 26,000, and attributes “the Gypsy
losses for all of Yugoslavia solely to the Croatian puppet state” (Cohen 107). Kovacevic
has used the numbers presented as a tool to push blame from Serbia to Croatia. This
blame was reversed by Zerjavic to put blame on Serbia and undermine the actual number
of deaths caused by the Croatian side. In all that fight, the numbers presented cast more
shadows on an already complicated matter! If the numbers on Jasenovac, where we do
have some documentation, are so diverse and uncertain, how can one hope to find the
truth about camps and prisons, as well as about events that show little or no evidentiary
materials and documentations whatsoever? The lack of evidence, however, is not the
proof that certain atrocities never took place. It is only a lack of information and a way to
deny Gypsies their right:
Wir, die gelernten Zahlenfetischisten, sind sobald wir Genaues über das so
zahlreiche Volk der Roma erfahren wollen, auf grobe Schätzungen angewiesen;
selbst in Deutschland, einem Land also, in dem bekanntlich alles gezählt wird und
auf jeglichem Fachgebiet studierte Erbsenzähler fleißig sind, wissen wir nicht,
wie viele Sinti als Angehörige des Roma Volkes bei uns leben. Es gibt Grunde für
diese Ungenauigkeit. Ob hierzulande oder in Litauen, in Tschechien und der
Slowakei, allerorts in Europa wagen es viele Roma und Sinti nicht, sich kenntlich
150
zu machen. Ihre Erfahrung weiß von Verletzungen, die ihnen und ihren Familien
zugefügt wurden, als sie kenntlich, das heißt registriert waren...Abermals weiß
man nicht die genaue Zahl. Waren es fünfhunderttausend ermordete Roma oder,
wie der Historiker Eberhard Jäckel meint, „nur“ und allenfalls
hundertfünfzigtausend, weshalb man nicht, wie bei der Vernichtung der Juden,
von Völkermord sprechen dürfe? Selbst als Tote werden die Roma ausgegrenzt
(Grass 72, 73).
Many writers and scholars of Roma descent have spent their lives and energy
fighting to bring the statement made by Grass to the forefront of the Holocaust debate
and to confront the battle of numbers, which has been the main argument against
Gypsies’ total annihilation, namely that their number did not come close to the number of
Jewish victims. Hancock, a Roma professor himself, has stated:
I do not want to read references to the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum in the national press and learn only that it is a monument to the plight of
European Jews, as the New York Times told its readers on December 23, 1993. I
want to be able to watch epics such as Schindler's List and learn that Gypsies
were a central part of the Holocaust, too; or other films, such as Escape from
Sobibor, a Polish camp where, according to Kommandant Franz Stangl in his
memoirs, thousands of Roma and Sinti were murdered, and not hear the word
'Gypsy' except once, and then only as the name of somebody's dog (Churchill
1997).
In the beginnings of the battle for recognition, many of the scholars fought with
meager public awareness. But it was “not only that the public at large is unaware of the
151
Gypsy Holocaust, but Gypsies themselves are often ignorant of this aspect of their
history. Ours is an oral culture and there is low contact level among the various Gypsy
communities. The historians have not really dealt with this part of the Holocaust and it is
not part of the education curricula” (Bandy 1997).
Their struggle continues and so far Roma as a race mostly have been denied their
rights as victims of the Final Solution:
Determining the percentage or number of Roma who died in the Holocaust…is
not easy. Much of the Nazi documentation remains to be analyzed, and many
murders were not recorded, since they took place in the fields and forests where
Roma were apprehended. There are no accurate figures either for the prewar
Roma population in Europe, though the Nazi Party's official census of 1939
estimated it to be about two million, certainly an under-representation. The latest
(1997) figure from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Research Institute in
Washington puts the number of Roma lives lost by 1945 at "between a half and
one and a half million." Since the end of the Second World War, Germany's
record regarding the Roma people has been less than exemplary. Nobody was
called to testify in behalf of the Roma victims at the Nuremberg Trials, and no
war crimes reparations have ever been paid to Roma as a people (Hancock 1997).
How long the debates will persist and if the public recognition will ever be
obtained are questions that remain unanswered at this stage. “The fact remains that
Gypsies were rounded up, brutalized, interned, deported, used in medical experiments,
and liquidated on racial grounds, for belonging to an "inferior" race, according to Nazi
ideology” (Bandy 1997). The German government has slowly begun to acknowledge the
152
plight and the struggle of Roma and Sinti, and has done much in recent years to pay
reparation costs to a few of the survivors. The general public will, however, need more
time to get used to the fact that the Gypsy race, just as Jews, suffered an immense loss
during the Holocaust. The idea might take longer, due to the prejudices and stereotypes
many people still hold when the word ‘Gypsy’ is mentioned. The general public has no
sense of the true character, the plight, and the struggle Gypsies as a people have
experienced and continue to experience. According to Ian Hancock “how can you feel
compassion for a people you don’t know? We are an abstraction, to be discussed in our
absence and, worse, even in our presence, as though we don’t really exist, with no
thought for our feelings or our dignity” (2000). This ‘abstraction’ continues to hold out
and to survive, no matter how difficult the road and how thorny the way to equality and
recognition. The Holocaust is just another sad chapter in the book full of blank pages,
filled with prejudice, aches and tears. But, because Gypsies have been able to survive all
that prejudice, we should be able to acknowledge them as a race, persecuted on the racial
grounds. The fact that they continue to go on and strive to preserve their customs and
traditions, and that they show no bitter feelings and vengeance toward those who
attempted to annihilate their race should not be an excuse. Because of their patience and
endurance historians should be more eager to grant them their right. The numbers and the
terminology are only a distraction from the important conclusion: Gypsies were, like
Jews, persecuted and killed on the basis of legal documents, which declared them a racial
threat. Until we are willing to grant them the status that rightfully belongs to them, the
Great Devouring, prejudice and stereotyping will continue.
153
Conclusion
Gypsies have been an active part of European society ever since they came to Europe.
Along active membership came hardship, prejudice, and persecution. Though Gypsies
tried to live in harmony with local communities, they were labeled as outsiders because
of their racial characteristics. Various European countries dealt with the “Gypsy
problem” in harsh, brutal, and often inhumane ways. Germany continued this legacy in
1933, and legalized the persecution based on race, which applied to Jews and Gypsies.
Hitler, however, faced a difficulty in addressing the issue of the Gypsy race. His
politics of pure race were based on the rules established to portray Aryan race: blue eyes,
blond hair, strong men, hardworking women, and happy children. Gypsies, coming from
the Punjab area, were the true Aryans, and there was no way around this fact. But, they
did not fit the picture of the pure Aryan race. To avoid the conflict and confusion that the
terminology would bring, National Socialists labeled Gypsies as anti-socials, criminals,
thieves, and undesirables. Many laws against them were enacted with the excuse that they
were dangerous and unsafe. Regardless of what reasons were given, the fact remains that
the Gypsies were persecuted because of their race. This was evident in Himmler’s
statements, and in the laws enacted to persecute even Gypsies who had settled down, and
had been a part of the local community. Thus the discrimination and systematic
annihilation conducted on Gypsies was the same as the systematic, calculated and coldblooded annihilation of Jews. The racial laws found usage in all countries under Axis
rule. Some countries applied them with great vigor, while others, like Italy and Hungary,
used all means to get around these laws and help the persecuted races. The application of
154
the racial laws leaves many historians of today with the question of whether Gypsies can
and should be counted in the Holocaust studies. The general trend acknowledges that
many Gypsies died during World War II and feels pity and remorse towards the poor,
illiterate crowd, at the same time denying the idea that Gypsies were persecuted on racial
grounds. Next to this is another debate. As I have shown in my research, many historians
use the difficulty of defining a Rom as an excuse to claim that the persecution of Gypsies
in World War II was not a systematic persecution, which led to total annihilation and
genocide of a race. I beg to differ on both of these points. A general overview of the
history of Gypsies on the European soil shows that Gypsies were persecuted because of
their race, not because of their nomadic lifestyle. Testimonies of witnesses in Yugoslavia
show the same. Many of the Gypsies who were deported to Jasenovac were sedentary
when the war broke out in Yugoslavia. Thus to claim that Gypsies were persecuted and
annihilated because they were unsafe or dangerous is a noble way to admit that we do not
care that Gypsies were a target of racial genocide. Also, the fact that some governments
acted in favor of Gypsies, as in the case of Denmark, still does not erase the fact that the
racial laws were there, and that German allies acted on them. Examining the case of
Jasenovac clarifies this. There was no pardon. All Gypsies were killed.
It is astonishing to see the debate the issue of the racial persecution of Gypsies has
brought along. The war of words, the denial and unwillingness to acknowledge Gypsies
as a race and to admit that their suffering and destruction was proportionate to the
destruction of Jews only shows how little we have learned from the lessons of the
Holocaust.
155
Another finding in this research is the vastness of the topic as it relates to
Yugoslavia in the years 1941 to 1945. It has not been a priority in the Holocaust research
to find out what happened because most of the documents and materials have been
destroyed. Were it not for the recent conflicts in Yugoslavia, many of the issues that have
been weighing on the two regions I researched, Serbia and Croatia, would never have
been brought up. Yugoslavian historians spend time to acknowledge Jasenovac, however,
its brutality has been only vaguely referred to in the study of the Holocaust. Its existence
on the territory of Yugoslavia is seldom addressed. Maybe this is due to the fact that
Serbia and Croatia attempted to bury the brutality with the dead of Jasenovac and leave it
there in hopes of fostering social fraternity. My goal in presenting the facts of Jasenovac
(and I recognize that I have not really begun to depict the brutality which occurred at
Jasenovac) was not to stir the painful past. Nor was my desire to point the finger at
Serbian or Croatian people. The facts of history do not excuse or accuse either of the
regions. The Croatian and Serbian governments during the war years did little to help
Gypsies, or Jews. On the other hand, individuals in both regions sacrificed their lives in
hopes to help persecuted races. As I researched deeply into the past of the two regions, I
realized that both Serbia and Croatia are to be blamed for their government’s lack of
interest in saving Gypsy and Jewish lives. I did, however, find individuals in both regions
worth high praise for their courage in aiding Gypsies with food, shelter and protection.
In presenting Jasenovac, I did want to reveal to all who read how brutal this
concentration camp was. I wanted to warn every nation and every person who lulls
himself or herself into thinking that only Germans committed atrocities and persecuted
races. It could happen anywhere, and the outcome could be even more brutal than the one
156
we have witnessed watching movies about and from Auschwitz. The fact is that
Yugoslavia had concentration camps where Gypsies, Jews, Serbs, and Croats were killed
in the most sadistic ways. Why do historians forget to add Jasenovac, when they speak of
Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Sobibor or Treblinka? Jasenovac has been only vaguely
mentioned partly because of lack of interest, partly because of ignorance, and partly due
to a conscious exclusion on the part of historians. It is the time that Jasenovac became an
important entry on the list of Holocaust brutality because that is where it belongs.
My goal was not to depict Croatians as animals, and excuse Serbians as victims (I
have not addressed other regions in Yugoslavia, because of the magnitude of the
research, which needed to be done to depict those regions appropriately. I hope my work
on Serbia and Croatia will spark interest and further research about Slovenia, Macedonia
and Montenegro, because their case needs investigation as well, and could not be covered
here due to its volume). I hope to have shown that the atrocities were committed on both
Serbian and Croatian sides, and in organized groups such as the Ustasha, and the
Chetniks. In doing so, my goal was to tear down the stereotypes that still exist in our
culture today and to address the question of responsibility toward Gypsies Croatia and
Serbia had. Gypsies, who were labeled as the dangerous ones, committed only one
“crime”: they were Gypsy. Yet the stereotype of their being dangerous, evil, and criminal
still prevails and is shown in the reluctance to allow them a place next to Jews in the
Holocaust.
I wanted to share my love for these people. Along with that love I wanted to show
that they are human beings who love, feel, and suffer. They have been and still are
persecuted and belittled because of their race, not because of who they are.
157
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Vernichtungspolitik gegen Sinti und Roma. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 1989.
„Zwischen Romantisierung und Rassismus: Sinti und Roma, 600 Jahre in Deutschland.“
Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg. Stuttgart: Verband
Deutscher Sinti & Roma Landesverband Baden-Württemberg, 1998.
Museum exhibits, archives, and institutions:
“Archive Gallery.”(exhibit) Yugoslavian Archives of Yugoslavia. 17 November 2003
<http://www.arhiv.sv.gov.yu/
“Aven Amentza.” (exhibit) The Roma Center for Public Policies. 10 February 2004
<http://www.romanothan.ro/>.
Bulajic, Milan. “What was Jasenovac?” (exhibit) Jasenovac Museum Exhibition
Catalogue (MEC). Museum of the Victims of Genocide. Belgrade. 13 Dec. 2003
<http://www.jasenovac.org/whatwasjasenovac/index/asp>.
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“Etnicka tolerancija.” Federal Ministry of Ethnic and Minority Committees. 7 Feb. 2004
<http://www.etnickatolerancija.org.yu/manjine.html>.
“Holocaust Era in Croatia: 1941-1945, Jasenovac.” (permanent exhibit on line) United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington D.C. 17 January 2004
<http://www.ushmm.org>.
“World War II in Yugoslavia.” (exhibit) Military War Museum Yugoslavia. Belgrade,
Serbia.
“World War II.” (exhibit) Muzej Revolucije Narodnosti Jugoslavije (Museum of the
People’s Revolution Yugoslavia). Belgrade, Serbia.
“Roma Association Bahtalo Drom.” Radio and TV Station Nis. 9 February 2004
<http://www.bahtalodrom.org.yu/>.
„Yugoslavia-Jasenovac.“ (exhibit on line). Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance
Mulitmedia Learning Center. 26 February, 2004
<http://www.motlc.wiesenthal.com/pages/t034/t03448.html>.
“What was Jasenovac?” (exhibit). Jasenovac Research Institute. 21 December 2003
<http://www.jasenovac.org>.
World War II in Yugoslavia. Ed. Ivan Bajlo. 26 January 2004 <http://www.vojska.net>.
Video recordings (interviews, documentaries):
Jasenovac. Filmske Novosti. Documentary. Filmske Novosti Beograd, Yugoslavia, 1995.
No harm done: Report on the Dinko Sakic Trial. CNN & Time. Documentary. CNN,
1999.
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Personal interviews:
Buligovic, Mihajlo Mladji (Jr.). Personal Interview with Elizabeta Jevtic and Milorad
Jevtic. Telephone Interview. 8 Feb. 2004.
Grebenar, Josip Mladji (Jr.). Personal Interview with Elizabeta Jevtic. Trans. Elizabeta
Jevtic. Vienna, Austria. 18 Jan. 2004.
Jevtic, Milorad (son of Hristina Araplinovic, later Jevtic). Personal interview with
Elizabeta Jevtic. Trans. Elizabeta Jevtic. Telephone Interview. 20 Nov. 2003.
Stojko, Tibika (son of Katarina Grebenar). Personal Interview with Milorad Jevtic.
Telephone Interview. 10 Feb. 2004.
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